Wait a while before pruning, you may be surprised at what comes out. Some of my red roses actually have dark red-brown canes, but they are perfectly healthy and will be leafing out here in a short while. If you look at the growth buds along the cane, you may be able to see some starting to swell where the rose will begin to leaf out.

A master gardener once told me not to prune until the last danger of frost, because if you prune too early in a very cold area and then get another frost, you can end up losing more cane than if you just leave it all intact until there is no chance of freezing.

Maybe I'm being extra, but when I move out of this house one day when my kids are grown, I'm going to leave behind a sheet of detailed instructions on how to care for each plant 😅

Have you read this thread? You may find it helpful.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3772241/is-this-cane-dead-a-visual-guide-for-cold-zone-spring-pruning#n=53

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) I would have LOVED a set of detailed instructions on all of my perennials!! Thanks for that thread, I'll check it out. And good to know I may just need to wait a while for growth.

In your zone winter cane die back is normal for most roses but I doubt your roses are completely dead, A lot of old garden roses have brown or gray and woody looking canes but that doesn't mean the cane is dead. Unfortunately your November pruning was the exact wrong time of year to prune Seven Sisters. She is a once blooming rose and only blooms on old canes. At least one year old wood. So by pruning her in the fall you probably took off a lot of her one year old canes and that will greatly reduce your bloom for this year. Once blooming roses should only be pruned immediately after they finish their bloom in the spring or early summer.

The color of the outside of the canes is not an accurate way of telling if a cane is alive or not. You need to look at the inside of the cane. Find an end and snip off a small piece and look at the center of the cane. If it is brown/tan and dried up it is dead. Go down another few inches and clip again and look. Do this gradually down the cane until you find a center that looks white/greenish and moist. from there on down the cane should be alive. Do this with each cane. After a bit you'll get a better feel for what might be dead and what is still alive.

Your red rose sounds like a modern rose and die back is even more common. Use the same method of pruning to find what is good, live cane and what is not. On these types of roses it is a good idea to make your last cut at a 45 degree angle about a quarter inch above an outward facing growth node. Take off all the dead wood first and see what you have left before you decide to do more pruning.

In your cold zone I caution you to wait a bit longer before doing any pruning. It is still too early. I am in zone 6b and I am just going to start pruning mine this week. A rule of thumb is to wait until the forsythia bushes are blooming. That's usually when the roses begin to show new leaf growth as well and you can see where new leaves will be coming from to make your cuts easier to find.

@seil zone 6b MI, thank you for this VERY helpful guidance! The forsythias here are actually already dropping their flowers, so we're pretty far along. I am glad to have more info on the Seven Sisters rose, also-- I had a lot of trouble locating good info on them in my searches last year. Sounds like I may have one year of fewer or no blooms as my price to pay, but I do think they survived based on some of the guidance I've already read in this thread-- there is a lot of green cane at the base of both bushes. Always learning!

Here is a photo of the miniature red rose from last summer. If anyone has ID suggestions, that would be helpful!

See:

https://www.brainerddispatch.com/lifestyle/home-and-garden/6975450-Ask-the-Master-Gardener-Reinvigorating-your-roses

If you want more info on your Seven Sisters go here.

https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/plants.php?searchNmTyp=5&searchNm=seven+sisters&rid=3954&sbSearch=SEARCH&tab=1

There are a few different ones listed so you'll have to look at the pictures and decide which you have.

I think your red rose may be a Knock Out. They're pretty much bullet proof. You can prune them any way you wish and they should be fine. Here's a link for that one,

https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.24139