At 22, tenor Spencer McKnight has only been singing for a few years – but he’s really made use of those 5 years.
At age 17 he started singing when a friend of his at school wanted to do a musical theatre duet at festival – though his family wasn’t a musical one, he had spent a lot of time listening to recordings, so it seemed like a good idea to see how lessons would go. As time went on he began studying with mezzo soprano Lisa Hornung, and over time he left his Political Studies degree to pursue music.
In 2013 Spencer won the Saskatoon Kinsmen Competition, and took home top awards at the Provincial Music Festival Finals. In the summer of 2013 he traveled to Ontario to represent Saskatchewan at the National Music Finals – the only male singing in the competition, and one of the youngest, he took home the Jan Simmons Award for Art Song for a performance of a song cycle by Catalan composer Fredric Mompou.
Spencer is presently studying at the University of Toronto with vocal pedagogue Mark Daboll, and was recently featured as the soloist for the University of Toronto’s Men’s Chorus December concert. And in the last few years he’s had the opportunity to work with the who’s who of the voice world: Tracy Dahl, Judith Forst, Mary Lou Fallis, Laurence Ewashko, Robert MacLaren, Laura Loewen, Elizabeth McDonald, Elizabeth Turnbull, Monica Whitcher, and Bonnie Cutsforth Huber.
His voice is fresh and brassy and exciting – and it is a pleasure to present him as our second debut of the season.