Energy and innovation: How Miertschin hopes to revamp the Bethel College Department of Music
Despite being new to the college, Miertschin has high hopes for the future and plans to reshape parts of the music department while still implementing many core Bethel traditions.
A quick glance into the office of Chris Miertschin is enough to introduce you to Bethel College’s new director of bands. Starting a new job is never simple, and the space, filled to the brim with instruments and sheet music, is indicative of the messiness of beginning fresh.
Formerly the director of bands at Hutchinson Community College, and then the athletic band director at Kansas Wesleyan University, Miertschin is no stranger to the challenges of learning the ways of a new school. Miertschin spent his undergraduate years at Kansas State, where he studied horn performance and music education. He then attended the University of Georgia, where he did his graduate work in horn performance.
At Bethel, Miertschin runs the wind ensemble and athletic band, teaches private lessons for brass musicians, and teaches various classes within the music department. Outside of Bethel, Miertschin keeps just as busy, playing for the Salina Symphony, the Wichita Wind Symphony, and in the pit orchestra of Theatre Salina, whose production of Matilda the Musical is showing the first four weekends of September.
Miertschin was drawn to Bethel for a few reasons. “At [Kansas] Wesleyan, I was on the staff side of things,” he said. At Bethel, however, “I saw an opportunity for me to be more in the classroom and less on the road.”
Additionally, Miertschin was attracted by the musical culture at Bethel. “Hearing about how big a part of the overall community the Music Department is here. That's what got me excited about the program.”
“Hearing about how big a part of the overall community the Music Department is here. That’s what got me excited about the program.”
Chris Miertschin
While many professors may forget what it was like to be an involved, often overworked student, Miertschin remembers clearly. About his experience pursuing degrees in music education and performance, he said: “I think I got up to nine [musical ensembles] at one point. Then you have those days where you play for eight hours, and you think about that after the fact and it’s like, oh boy, my face hurts.”
Along with an understanding of his students, Miertschin brings energy and a desire to make sure that his students’ musical education reflects the changing ways in which musicians succeed today. “All of us here, we were all trained the same way that musicians were in the 1800s. Everyone that was alive then is no longer here,” said Miertschin.
Whether those changes look like using Beyonce’s “Love on Top” in his Aural Skills class, encouraging music majors to take business and marketing classes, or opening the pep band to string musicians, Miertschin says that he wants to encourage “growth in terms of how we think about what we do as professional musicians.”
Community outreach is also a large focus for Miertschin. He shared, “Something that I did in Hutchinson that I want to try to bring to Bethel, is having a wind ensemble do an off campus concert, preferably in a non-traditional location.”
Miertschin feels that outreach presents a unique opportunity for musicians. “It's an opportunity for us to reach folks, that, you know, don't necessarily want to come to our auditorium for a concert,” he said. “They hear a piece of music they've never heard before. They think, ‘Oh, hey, that's, that's kind of neat. When can I hear more of that? Where can I hear more of that?’ And, you know, we start to build our audience up.”
While typically a concert attendee has to go out of their way to hear live music, Miertschin hopes that off-campus performance opportunities allow Bethel musicians to “bring music to the people,” and expand the audience beyond those who may usually choose to attend a Bethel concert.
Despite being relatively new to the Bethel community, Miertschin has high hopes for the future. “Most people, when they think of a small school… they don't always think of a super high quality music department.” At Bethel, however, he said, “we can be that group that's a very high quality music department.”
In reference to the Department of Music, Miertschin said: “There are traditions we don't want to mess with, [but] in some cases there's also room for new traditions, room for innovation in the program. And I think that's what we want to see.”