Gretchen Renshaw

Hendrix professor, conductor wants to grow program

Gretchen Renshaw sits on the stage inside Reves Recital Hall at Hendrix College in Conway. The Pennsylvania native briefly considered going into medicine before majoring
Gretchen Renshaw sits on the stage inside Reves Recital Hall at Hendrix College in Conway. The Pennsylvania native briefly considered going into medicine before majoring

Despite a halfhearted attempt to resist it, Gretchen Renshaw of Conway dances to the same beat as her musical family.

Renshaw, 27, is conductor of the Hendrix College Wind Ensemble and director of the new pep band, and teaches classes in the music department and is a low-brass instructor.

The Middleburg, Pennsylvania, native’s parents were music educators. Her mother was a choir director at Renshaw’s high school for 35 years; her father was a band director before he became principal, also at her high school. Her sister, who is older than Renshaw by 12 years, is a choral director.

“This didn’t come out of nowhere,” Renshaw said, laughing as she sat in her office in the

Trieschmann Fine Arts Building on the campus in Conway. “I thought to be different, I’d go into medicine, but my junior/senior year of high school, I knew this was it. I’ve been around music my whole life. Mom would sing or play piano. … They played all kinds of music in the house or when we were driving somewhere.”

Renshaw started playing violin when she was 5, following in her sister’s footsteps.

“I saw her play violin, and I thought that was the coolest thing,” Renshaw said.

When she joined her school band in the fourth grade, Renshaw started playing euphonium, one of the instruments her father played, and she added trombone in high school in jazz band and marching band.

With that fleeting idea of becoming a doctor gone, she went to Penn State University and majored in music.

“At the time, I was pretty dead set on some sort of performance career,” likely a military band, she said.

One of her music instructors, who was also a mentor, encouraged her to be more diverse. She started playing the tuba and switched to the college-teaching route.

However, she didn’t take a single education course.

“That’s one of the odd things about music. … I’m sitting here with four performance-based degrees,” she said. “There is some element — some element — of learning on the fly.”

She has a bachelor’s degree in music from Penn State, a master’s from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and another master’s degree and doctorate from Michigan State University. She was a graduate assistant at Arkansas and at Michigan State, where she was also a University Distinguished Fellow — hailed as the most prestigious fellowship at the university.

Her list of honors includes winning the Music Teachers National Association Young Artist Brass Competition in Atlanta, playing euphonium, when she was about 19. She won the state level in Pennsylvania to advance to the regional level, which she won to perform in the national finals.

“It turns out, my mom was my accompanist,” Renshaw said.

Renshaw had never been to Arkansas before she enrolled at the University of Arkansas. Her teacher at Penn State had a highly accomplished former student who was teaching at Arkansas.

“I came from Penn State, and that’s a giant football school. It was hard for me initially to embrace the

Razorback way and the Razorback style of football because I came from a strong tradition,” she said.

The people were a pleasant surprise, she said.

“People were warm and friendly, and they found my accent funny,” Renshaw said.

It’s not that people in Pennsylvania aren’t nice, she said, but Arkansans outwardly express their emotions more often.

“The Southern hospitality everybody talks about — yeah, I saw that right away,” she said.

When she went to Michigan State to get her doctorate in tuba, living there was the best of both cultures, she said.

“I said this is a really interesting combination of the hospitality and friendliness, but yet … the grittiness, earthiness I experienced in my hometown,” she said. “That was the perfect balance to me, and I was the happiest little camper for those three years.”

A really busy happy little camper. In addition to earning her doctorate, she got a second master’s of music in wind and orchestral conducting.

“That was the final step to set myself up for this college-teaching path,” she said.

When she started applying for teaching positions, it was tough. Out of about 30 for which she applied, only four positions were strictly for tuba and euphonium professors.

“Despite doing as much as a person could do, … I didn’t get anywhere with those,” she said. “I realized, ‘Wow, it is super competitive.’ I happened to find a place like Hendrix that was willing to take a chance on somebody like me coming straight out of school. I feel very lucky that it worked out.”

John Krebs, chairman of the Hendrix College Music Department, said Renshaw has a lot of music talent, for one.

“She brings a high level of musicianship to whatever she does,” Krebs said. “She has a lot of performance experience. For someone so young, she has a lot of classroom-teaching experience, and she brings a great work ethic to whatever she sets her mind to.”

Renshaw joined the Hendrix College Music Department in fall 2015, and in addition to conducting, she teaches music fundamentals. This spring, she will co-teach a conducting class.

The wind ensemble is composed of students with a variety of majors.

“It’s so fun to see them come together and do this thing they all share,” she said. “We play all kinds of music. Sometimes I stretch them and have them play something I know they may not like. I let them vote on repertoires as well, one piece a semester.”

Renshaw said she gives students a chance twice a semester to evaluate her and the program, from the music to rehearsals.

“I use that to make adjustments and change,” she said.

This year, she added pep-band director to her responsibilities. Hendrix reinstituted a football program three years ago after 52 years without one, but the school didn’t have a pep band until this fall.

“Even as early as my interview, they were talking to me about [the pep band],” she said. “I said, yeah, I think that would be a really neat addition to our program.”

The 15-member pep band has wind, brass and percussion instruments. As much as Renshaw loves classical music, the band plays pop music, the theme song from Rocky, for example.

“Sometimes we’ll have little [classical] bits for [playing shorts in the stands], like ‘O, Fortuna,’” she said.

The pep band will perform only at home games, and it has had one this year; the second is Saturday. The reviews were positive, she said.

“The student section, the football coach, president, the provost, even a board of trustees member, were emailing and coming up after the game saying the atmosphere was so much more fun and exciting with us there,” she said. “We can be there to help keep the atmosphere of the crowd more enthusiastic.”

Renshaw is enthusiastic about her role in music education, and she has a sense of responsibility to help guide students, just like she was mentored.

“My immediate goal is to continue to understand completely the culture of Hendrix and what I need to do to best serve students,” she said. “One of the hardest things is to do that.

“With the wind ensemble, I want to get it right. I want to make sure the people in the wind ensemble have fun.”

With the pep band, she said, her goal is to figure out, “What is going to be the right combination of what we’re doing for our school or team?’” She said she also wants to find the “sweet spot of the kind of music we will play at games, how we will interact with fans, how we will interact with the football team.”

She also has high expectations of herself and her students in the classroom.

“I want to know what the students need from me,” she said. “I just want to continue to grow our music program.”

Renshaw said she will start in November making recruiting visits to high schools in Arkansas, including Conway, as well as to schools out of state, “to make sure they are aware of our music program and the music possibilities here,” she said.

Because not everyone needs, or wants, to be a doctor.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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