Bassist Renaud Boucher-Browning is an active performer and teacher in his hometown, where he
serves as principal bassist of the Boise Baroque Orchestra and as substitute bassist with the Boise
Philharmonic. During the academic year, “Dr. B” teaches orchestra, guitar, History of Rock &
Roll, and Digital Sound & Music Production at Centennial High School in the West Ada School
District. In the summertime, Renaud coaches the bass section at the Idaho Orchestra Institute and
serves as a string ensemble coach at the Boise State University Summer Chamber Music Camp.
Renaud fell in love with the sound of the double bass when the North Junior High School
orchestra, led by Becky Prindle, performed an outreach concert at his elementary school. He
vividly remembers how feeling the incredible resonance of the bass section through the gym
floor inspired him to become a bassist. Renaud began taking bass lessons at age 10 with Jack
Koncel, then principal bassist of the Boise Philharmonic. Later, at Boise High School, orchestra
director Wendy Hartman nurtured Renaud’s creativity as a bassist, composer, and conductor.
Renaud holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in double bass performance from Rice
University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston, Texas where he studied with Paul Ellison. At
the Shepherd School, Renaud collaborated with a team of students to coordinate, program, and
host outreach concerts for school-age children in the Just For U! Music Program (JUMP!). While
studying in Houston, Renaud coached bass sectionals and taught bass lessons for the Houston
Youth Symphony and served as bass consultant for the Kinder High School for the Performing
and Visual Arts. In 2014, as a senior in college, Renaud appeared as soloist in a concerto by
Johann Baptist Vanhal with the Boise Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Stern.
Renaud’s musical studies have taken him on many travels, made possible by two Wagoner
Scholarships from Rice University and a Harriet Hale Wooley Scholarship from the United
States Foundation in Paris. After a year of study in Paris, Renaud earned diplomas in
performance and teaching from bass soloist François Rabbath. During a summer of study in
London, Renaud observed bass pedagogue Caroline Emery teach at the Royal College of Music,
the Yehudi Menuhin School, and Eton College. Renaud’s participation in the summer courses at
the Festival Domaine Forget and the Orford Music Academy in Québec has shaped his
ergonomic technique and his experiential approach to teaching music. Renaud has performed in
the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in Germany, the Orchestra of the Cité Internationale in
Paris, and on period instruments in the Youth Orchestra of the Abbey in France under the
direction of conductors including Ton Koopman, Laurence Equilbey, and Christoph Eschenbach.
Renaud holds a doctorate in double bass performance from McGill University’s Schulich School
of Music, where he studied with Ali Yazdanfar, principal bassist of the Montreal Symphony
Orchestra. As a recipient of a Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, Renaud conducted artistic
research to learn to improvise cadenzas for the Classical concertos of Johannes Sperger (1750-
1812) by reverse engineering the cadenza sketches in Sperger’s manuscripts. Sperger performed
his eighteen concertos on a five-stringed, fretted ancestor of the modern bass called the Viennese
violone, whose unique tuning in thirds and fourths gives this music its beautiful resonance. Part
of Renaud’s doctoral thesis research appears in an article in the Online Journal of Bass Research.
Renaud enjoys swimming laps and practicing Iyengar yoga to maintain his fitness as a musical
athlete. In his free time, he teaches bass lessons, cultivates a garden, and plays board games.