Toronto Chamber Choir

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Through spoken words, visual images, and music from both East and West, this program considers the fascinating life of Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a Jesuit who traveled from Lisbon to spend his last twenty-eight years in China. The first Westerner to be allowed entrance to the Forbidden City as an advisor to the Ming court, Ricci impressed the Chinese with memory techniques he mastered from the ancient Greeks. Kathleen Kajioka’s narrative will describe the great value put on the art of memory in both Europe and China during Ricci’s lifetime, and will consider the effects of memory’s decline in our own era.

Rebecca Genge, soprano

Rebecca Claborn, mezzo-soprano

Jonathan MacArthur, tenor

Richard Hrytzak, baritone