Music bringing countries together

The memories that about 85 Vermillion residents made this summer in Ratingen, Germany, were a lifetime experience. Two Vermillion high school teachers facilitated the trip to celebrate Vermillion’s sister city’s 750th anniversary. 

Almost 1% of Vermillion was in Ratingen at the time. Kevin O’Kelley gave his first formal speech as mayor at the welcome ceremony in Germany, completely in German. O’Kelley was sworn in as mayor the same week as the event.

The organization for the music side of the trip started with musicians in Ratingen. Since Todd Cranson had experience as a band director, he volunteered to organize it from the United States side of things. Cranson was playing with Alphorns in front of his house when he was pitched the idea to be a part of this trip by a Vermillion high school teacher.

In the United States Ambassador’s speech, she stated that “Political situations are very tense right now, so this is what we need. That human-to-human connection.”

Cranson mentioned that getting to have this experience with Ratingen gave him hope for humanity. 

“One of my favorite music experiences in my whole life,” Becky Rider, former band teacher, said.

Rider was asked to coordinate rehearsing local musicians and high school students who were not a part of the exchange program to get them to Germany.

“[This experience was] everything we hoped for, and then some,” Rider said.

The Ratingen band director ran the rehearsals in English when they performed together. The Vermillion high school students sat with other German band members. Two of the horn players from Vermillion and Germany still keep in contact.

“To play under the baton of somebody that wrote the piece, in the place where it was written to commemorate, that was a real highlight to me,” Rider said. 

They played a seven and a half minute concert-band piece made by Charles “Chuck” Dibley called “Ratingen 1276 to 2026” that he wrote for this trip specifically. He tried to capture the feeling of time moving through a city. The Tuesday night concert was the world premiere of the piece, and the audience gave a long ovation.

“It has taken me about now to talk about that concert without getting choked up. It was so meaningful to me to do it with our sister city, with kids I taught and people I taught with,” Rider said. 

Dibley wrote and conducted a piece of music for the band to commemorate the 750th anniversary in Ratingen. The Vermillion community members, high school band members, and the Ratingen band all learned it. 

“You hear people say the cliché that music is the universal language, but we really got to experience that. It made that cliché not feel like a cliché to me,” Cranson said.

Todd was able to play 3 concerts during his time there. Getting to play music at that event and having those comments made was most impactful. There was a larger audience during the final concert, which made the performance memorable to everyone. 

“The experience and trip turned out to be an amazing thing for Vermillion but also really cool for USD specifically,” Cranson said. 

His students benefited directly from the trip. Afterward, USD did additional work, touring the Adams music factory and purchasing a tuba in the Netherlands. 

“I hope the way I work with students in rehearsals was constructive. You hope they learn something and get better at their music because they work with them,” Rider said.