Continuo Connect — Concert // Divertissements Chinois: First Encounters

​We are delighted to bring our project exploring the musical links between 17th and 18th century China and Europe to the China Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum with its rich and historical collection of Chinese art. Our concert forms part of the Asian Art Week (www.asianartinlondon.com/calendar/) and will be preceded in the morning by a lecture by the V&A Curator Xiaoxin Li on a new bequest of an object owned by the 19th century Scottish Chinese scholar James Legge. Our programme will include Chinese music from the Ming and Qing dynasties complemented with music from their contemporaries in England, France and Italy, including Caccini, Gabrieli, Purcell and Rameau. In a further exploration of 'Musical Journeys' around the world we also include the music of three visitors to 18th century London: Ignatius Sancho, who was born on a transatlantic slave ship and settled in London, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, born in Guadeloupe to a French father and a Senegalese slave from Senegal, who made two visits to London in the 1780s, and a mysterious Cantonese merchant called 'Loum Kiqua' or 林 奇 who visited London briefly in 1757.