>>PREVIEW
2005 BETTY MITCHELL AWARDS
August 29
Stage West
Brigit Knecht is not what you’d call an underachiever. The classical violinist performs with numerous orchestras and ensembles in southern Alberta, composes, teaches and is still finding time to work on her PhD in the graduate interdisciplinary program at the University of Calgary. And of course there’s the theatre. She’s been composing incidental music and serving as a music director ever since she was an undergraduate, and now it’s all paying off with a Betty Mitchell Award nomination for her musical direction of Mob Hit Productions’ Bat Boy: The Musical.
I met Brigit seven or eight years ago when I was a student at U of C, but over the years we’d lost touch, so I was delighted to read of her Betty nomination and even more delighted when I was asked to interview her. Our chat over coffee in Kensington ranged over topics from Harry Potter (who’s going to die in this book?) to the Kyoto Accord to cowboy shirts and somehow still managed to fit in a few minutes about Brigit herself.
A longtime musician, Knecht came up through the Mount Royal College Conservatory — a program for gifted young musicians — and then attended the University of Calgary, where she got her bachelor’s degree in violin performance with a minor in drama. It was while at U of C that she first started music directing.
"When I got into theatre, I thought the music side was really interesting and fun," she remembers, adding that once other students found out she was into music, they all wanted to use her skills. She also began composing for different productions during this time. After finishing her undergrad, she moved on to bigger things south of the border.
"I was in the States for a long time," she says of her years doing her master’s in violin performance at Yale University, and living and performing in Michigan and Oklahoma. She kept up her interest in theatre, securing a much-coveted spot doing summer stock in Vermont, music directing while at Yale and continuing to compose while in Michigan.
"I did zero theatre while I was in Oklahoma, though," she says, explaining that there really weren’t any opportunities there.
But since returning to Calgary about three years ago, Knecht has, through the necessity of establishing herself as a violinist in town, seen her involvement in theatre fall off a bit. Freelancing and playing as an extra with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and as assistant concertmaster with the Red Deer Symphony, has kept her busy. The exception has been her work with the Mob Hit gang, who she knows from university. "I helped them out with sound design here and there," she says, and in 2003 did the musical direction for their production of The Barber Show, a modernization of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. It was that show that reignited her interest in the stage. "I’d forgotten how fun theatre was," she says. But it would still be another two years before she worked with Mob Hit again.
"Bat Boy was really only my second thing with Mob Hit," she says, but despite that, it was a major undertaking. Assembling and conducting a band, not to mention working with a large group of non-professional musicians, is no mean feat and Knecht admits the workload kept her out of the social loop of the production. "It just took so much concentration to conduct the band and singers," she says. "I’m sure there are funny stories (about doing the show), but I was just too busy."
However, she is quick to praise the people she worked with. "It’s a really hard score… so there was a lot of work. They did a really amazing job."
Now studying the effects of modern media on the traditional performing arts for her PhD and working as a teaching assistant for a first-year engineering class in creative thinking, Knecht is unsure how exactly she’s going to fit all of her interests into her busy life, but says she’s anxious to keep working in the theatre.
"I’m looking to do more of it," she says, "it was great fun. It’s high-stress but it’s great when it abates and it all comes together." It may seem like she has a lot on her plate, but the obviously highly driven Knecht admits she thrives on having so many things on the go. "That’s the best part about it. When you’re working you get to do a new thing every day." |
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