Wichita and Orléans, France, mark 50 years as Sister Cities with musical exchange

Part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the sister cities agreement between Wichita and Orléans, France, is a musical cultural exchange.

Jerry Scholl, a percussionist professor from Wichita State, and his wife, violinist Dominique Corbeil, performed with the Orchestre Symphonique d’Orléans earlier this month, and the orchestra’s principal trumpet, Vincent Mitterand, is in Wichita this week, including two public performances.

“It’s been wonderful,” said Corbeil, a Wichita violin teacher who joined the string section for the concert. “Everybody’s been incredibly welcoming and really wonderful.”

Scholl was a soloist on “Raise the Roof,” a concerto for timpani written by Michael Daugherty (whose Amelia Earhart tribute, “Blue Electra,” was performed by the Wichita Symphony Orchestra last weekend). The symphony even obtained timpani drums made by the Holland-based percussion company he endorses for the performance.

“Gerald Scholl thrills, shakes, unleashes, explodes the atmosphere, applauded by an audience that does not hide its pleasure,” a French reviewer wrote of the concert.

Scholl, who has taught at Wichita State since 2007, made his European debut as a soloist with the Orléans concert.

“I don’t get to be a soloist as much as I’d like, and I don’t really need to do this, but it’s a great opportunity,” he said in a Zoom interview from Orléans with Corbeil the day before the concert. “The orchestra has very talented musicians and I feel very lucky to have this opportunity so I don’t take it lightly.”

Mitterand will perform in the inaugural concert for the WSU faculty chamber music series at 3 p.m. today at Miller Concert Hall on the WSU campus. They will perform Stravinsky’s “l’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldiers Tale),” with the libretto read by members of the university’s French faculty.

He also will perform at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Miller Concert Hall, featured in “Concerto for Trumpet” by French composer Henri Tomasi with the WSU wind ensemble.

While Scholl said his French was “petite” or small, Corbeil is a Montreal native who speaks fluently and serves as interpreter.

The couple’s son, Oliver, spent a semester in Orléans in 2009 and his mother visited him then, and noticed much progress in the city of 114,000.

“It’s incredibly beautiful,” she said. “In the 14 years since I’ve seen it there’s been an incredible amount of renovation and restoration of these gorgeous houses. The city’s even more beautiful than I remember.”

While the sister cities agreement with Orléans is 50 years old this year, the relationship with the two cities stretches back to 1944, when troops from Wichita helped liberate the city from the Nazis during World War II.

“We had a relationship with them through our soldiers before we became official sister cities in 1973,” said Sherri Lichtenberger, past president of the Wichita Area Sister Cities.

Wichita donated a small steam engine train with three cars to Orléans in the beginning of the agreement, and it is currently being refurbished with plans for a grand reopening in the spring.

Lichtenberger visited Orléans several years ago and was impressed with what she saw and experienced.

“They were wonderful to us,” she recalled. “The group there met us and entertained us and we had the fireworks on the Loire (River). We said we have to take some of this back to Wichita because it’s spectacular. They couldn’t have been nicer to us.”

Visitors from Orléans are scheduled to come to Wichita for Riverfest in May, she said.

Orléans celebrates its native daughter, Joan of Arc, with a festival early in May and a statue on horseback in the city.

Lichtenberger said Orléans was Wichita’s first sister city, followed closely by Tlalnepantla de Baz, Mexico, then Kaifeng, China, and Cancun, Mexico.

Scholl credited Tim Shade, director of the school of music at WSU, and Rodney Miller, dean of the college of fine arts, for taking the initiative with the project.

“Everyone saw what the potential of this is in the future,” he said. “We really hope whether it’s in the arts or different fields within the university that there will be strengthening of the relationship and exchange of ideas.”

Both Scholl and Corbeil said they enjoyed interacting with their French counterparts, finding many musicians and teachers in common.

“What a way to get to learn to know these people and build up relationships with people,” Corbeil said. “It’s a small world, a very small world.”