FLAMENCO GUITARIST FOLLOWING HIS DREAM
Child prodigy delights audiences across Canada and in Australia
When Harry Knight was five years old, he performed live for the second time in his life at the Calgary Spanish Festival, which was captured for posterity on home video.
Playing flamenco guitar, Harry looked professional and poised as he concentrated intently on his fretwork. But that changed when the song sped up and the audience reacted accordingly, clapping along and cheering. Suddenly a sly smile crossed his face. He topped it off with a generous bow as he soaked in his first standing ovation.
“I don’t remember ever getting nervous at a concert,” reports Harry, now 11 and a seasoned international performer of flamenco guitar. “... I really like the feeling, the adrenalin rush, too, when you go on stage and play for the people. It’s just a really great feeling and I really love performing and that’s what I practise for.”
Harry’s immersion into flamenco started long before he received a standing ovation at the Calgary Spanish Festival. His father, Peter, is a longtime flamenco guitar teacher in Calgary. It wasn’t long before he noticed his son took an unusually intense interest in the music that was often floating about the household. He also noticed that his son possessed not only the interest but also the dexterity and unflappable focus required to perform the lively style of music.
“He was just kind of wired to it right away,” says Peter Knight.
“When I used to teach guitar in the house, he was like six months old and (he’d) be with me. I’d have my student, I’d have my music stand and we had this Fisher Price swing in front of us. To give his mom a break, he would just be sleeping in this swing listening to the music, falling asleep to it.
“When he woke up he wouldn’t fuss. He wasn’t like he was fussing to get out, he wasn’t looking for his mom or some milk or looking at a face to try to get a reaction, he was looking at the fingers,” his father says.
“He would look at the fingers of my student and me. It got to a point that when he was in his high chair, I would walk into the kitchen with a guitar when he had his sippy cup and Pablum and all that and he would literally shake when I started playing.”
Harry, of course, doesn’t remember this, nor does he recall the first time he picked up a guitar.
“I think it was mainly my dad playing guitar around the house and his students coming in and learning how to play guitar. I think that really interested me,” Harry says. “I can’t remember the first time I played guitar. But I do remember getting a little classical guitar for Christmas and that was my first guitar.”
Still, by the time he was five years old, his path in life seemed set.
It didn’t take long for Calgary and beyond to take notice.
After his performance at the Calgary Spanish Festival, Harry played the Stampede Talent Search and a flood-relief fundraiser that also included singer-songwriters Stephen Fearing and John Wort Hannam. He has played with renowned guitarist Pavlov in cities across Canada and for productions by the late bandleader Tommy Banks. In 2016, he travelled to Spain to study flamenco guitar for five weeks with some of the world’s top players.
In 2018, he played two nights at Moses Znaimer’s Ideacity in Toronto and two nights with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.
He also appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres-produced show Little Big Shots Australia, which found Harry ending his flamenco performance by throwing in a few riffs from AC/DC’s Thunderstruck.
“It was such a great experience to go to Australia,” Harry says. “It was absolutely stunning there and playing that TV show and swimming and stuff.”
It’s been a bewildering few years for the young musician.
On Saturday, he will perform at the University Theatre to help fund another educational trip, this time to Seville, later this year. It will be a flamenco extravaganza, to say the least.
Harry Knight and Friends will also feature flamenco guitarist Gareth Owen, saxophonist Oliver Miguel, bassist Hank Insell, percussionists Luis (El Pana) Tovar and Raul Gomez Tabera, singer Silvia Temis and dancer Maria Regnier.
“I want to — definitely want to — keep playing guitar,” he says. “I have a goal to try to play guitar on all seven continents.”