Cappella Romana

Its performances “like jeweled light flooding the space” (Los Angeles Times), Cappella Romana is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Founded in 1991, Cappella Romana’s name refers to the medieval Greek concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), which embraced Rome and Western Europe, as well as the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople (“New Rome”) and its Slavic commonwealth. Each program in some way reflects the musical, cultural and spiritual heritage of this ecumenical vision.

Flexible in size according to the demands of the repertory, Cappella Romana is based in the Pacific Northwest, where it presents annual concert series in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. It regularly tours in Europe and North America, having appeared at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Center, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Pontificio Istituto Orientale in Rome, the Sacred Music Festival of Patmos, the University of Oxford, Princeton University, and Yale University.

In 2010, Cappella Romana became a participant in the research project “Icons of Sound: Aesthetics and Acoustics of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul,” a collaboration between Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and Department of Art & Art History, and gave a performance in Stanford’s new Bing Hall in February 2013, in the virtual acoustics of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (a 11.5 second reverberation time). The ensemble’s next European tour in 2013 includes performances in the UK, Germany (Tage Alter Musik, Regensburg) and Athens.