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After a decades-spanning career as a musician, Chattanooga-based violinist Mark Reneau is set to bid farewell to the city, following his performance Saturday of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” with the Chattanooga Bach Choir.
Before Reneau, now 69, was a professional violinist, he was a child who grew up around music. His mother was a pianist, playing for churches the family went to in Reneau’s youth, he said in an interview. The piano from his childhood home now sits in his living room, surrounded by shelves stocked full of CDs.
Reneau was introduced to the violin by his third grade teacher, a musician who brought her violin in to show her class. She asked if anyone would like to try and play the instrument, and Reneau raised his hand.
“(I) made some awful racket and just fell in love with it,” he said.
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If you go
– What: Chattanooga Bach Choir masterworks concert, featuring Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis”
– When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
– Where: Covenant Presbyterian Church, 8451 E. Brainerd Road
– Cost: $30 donation
– More info: chattanoogabachchoir.org
Because he had just quit piano lessons, Reneau had to convince his parents to let him take up the violin, he said. He persisted, he insisted. And so, on Feb. 1, 1964 (“Don’t ask me how I remember that,” he said), Reneau had his first violin lesson, and by age 13, his desire to be a career musician was “pretty much set in stone.”
“I’ve never really thought seriously about doing anything else,” Reneau said. “I’ve never had that question, ‘Well, what do I want to do when I grow up?’ My dad had several suggestions, of course, none of which included music or the violin.”
While his father might not have put musician under the heading of “real jobs,” Reneau’s career has been fruitful. Long-standing work with the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera and the Nashville Symphony first came in the 1970s, and he served as concertmaster for the Huntsville Symphony for almost two decades. In pop concerts, Reneau has performed with the likes of Roberta Flack, Bernadette Peters, Natalie Cole and Tony Bennett, among many others.
Reneau’s career has taken him far and wide. Domestically, he has played in festivals in Washington, New York and Colorado. Internationally, he has gone as far as Sofia, Bulgaria, where he participated in a chamber music recital with some other musicians from the Huntsville Symphony.
Reneau described Bulgaria as the “poorest of the Soviet bloc countries,” noting that, riding from the airport, he saw buildings that appeared to have been bombed. Speaking of a unique experience there, Reneau said he had the opportunity to travel up a mountain outside the city to see fire-walkers, who move across hot coals carrying religious icons and banners.
“That’s something you don’t see on Lookout Mountain usually,” Reneau said. “Unless it’s a really good party.”
As for the performance, Reneau said it “was like performing anywhere else.”
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When it comes to performance, Reneau said there are shows that are more fun than others, some that are more “Earth-shaking emotionally” than others, even some that “just leave you floating.” Performing with Yo-Yo Ma, for example, “is like playing with the Dalai Lama,” Reneau said.
And, what inspires someone to keep playing for multiple decades?
“There’s always a possibility that you’ll get better,” Reneau said. “You don’t play the same way you did 40 years ago. It’s like any other part of life – some things are better, some things are not as easy as they were … So it changes, of course, over time. But what doesn’t change, I’ve discovered thus far, is simply the desire to do it. That doesn’t change.”
Reneau is not just a performer, he is also a teacher, having taken on his first student when he was a senior in high school. Since then, he has taught enough students that he is not sure if he wants to know the exact number, he joked. On some occasions, he has taught the children of some of his students, calling them his “grand-students.”
One of his previous students is Josh Holritz, who now serves as the associate concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony. Holritz studied with Reneau as a teenager in the 1990s before Holrtiz’s family moved away from Chattanooga, he said by phone. When his wife took up a position with the Chattanooga Symphony, Holritz returned to the city, and in the process reconnected with his former teacher – “Mr. Reneau” became just “Mark” then, Holritz said.
“He really wanted to make that distinction of, ‘You’re not my student anymore. You’re my colleague,'” Holritz said, explaining that it was a special moment.
Reneau has never lost his passion for music, Holritz said. Reneau still has “very much a young person’s awe and wonder,” an attitude that one realizes in a short time of being around him. While Holritz has lots of memories of his time with Reneau – too many to single out one in particular – he said what sticks out about Reneau is his sense of humor, his wit and his “eye roll that you can see from space.”
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Holritz has mixed feelings about Reneau’s departure from Chattanooga. On one hand, he is excited for Reneau, who will be moving westward following the Bach Choir concert. On the other, Holritz will “miss him like crazy.”
“There’s going to be a huge hole, not just musically but personally as well,” Holritz said. “He’s just a wonderful person and (has) meant so much to me personally, and I know he’s meant so much to the community at large.”
Before Reneau takes a bow and departs Chattanooga, he will perform Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” with the Bach Choir. The ensemble primarily performs early music, which includes works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, according to Bach Choir Artistic Director and Conductor David Long, who is in his 20th year with the organization. At the “Missa Solemnis” concert, which will feature a more-than-40-piece orchestra and a more-than-50-voice choir, the audience can expect “vocal fireworks,” because Beethoven “didn’t do anything easy,” Long said by phone.
“There’s definitely some of the most triumphant, glorious music in Western music in this piece,” Long said. “It’s a very famous piece that is not performed all that often because it’s so hard.”
For his part, Reneau, who has long-served as concertmaster for the Bach Choir, will perform the “Benedictus” solo, a more lyrical and gorgeous part of the overall piece, Long said. “Missa Solemnis” is a fitting piece for Reneau to conclude with because it has the violin solo and because it is “considered one of the great masses of all time,” Long said.
Long knew of Reneau by reputation before he met him, he said. Reneau was considered “to be about the best violinist in town,” which was confirmed, Long said, when he had the opportunity to hear Reneau play.
Every musician has subtle things about their performance that comes from their personality, Long said. When Reneau performs the “Benedictus” solo, he will play it in a way that reminds Long of him. When Long reflects on the concert in its aftermath, he will remember certain ways Reneau played, and “it will be a treasure,” he said.
As for Reneau, will his life flash before his eyes as he walks out to tune the orchestra at the concert? Probably, he said. The experience is “going to be quite loaded,” he said. And then he will have to play the violin.
Contact Sam Still at sstill@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6579.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / Mark Reneau plays his violin Feb. 28, 2025, at his home in Chattanooga.
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