BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Conducting's not exactly a woman's world. It's even less of a woman's world in Bulgaria, but Cynthia Katsarelis invaded it and did it successfully. With nothing but a baton.
Katsarelis, see, is music director of Seven Hills Sinfonietta, a community chamber orchestra, and has made such waves that they heard about her in Bulgaria.
Next thing you know, she's invited to conduct there with the Bourgas Philharmonic Orchestra. Which she did, the first woman, in late May. She's now back with a report.
Her program? Mozart, Brahms and Wagner. The reaction? So good she has been invited back (no date yet), despite a few dicey moments. Dicey moment one came when the pilot on the Sofia to Bourgas flight decided he didn't want to fly that night, stranding her in Varna. She got to Bourgas via cab after negotiating the price by writing on a dirty windshield. Cost of the 112-mile ride was 100,000 leva ($17.97). Dicey moment two came at a rehearsal when Katsarelis gave the musicians instructions and they got huffy. They're not used to a conductor, least of all a woman, doing that.
Things set themselves right when she explained, via interpreter, that she meant no disrespect.
Seven Hills opens its Cincinnati season Nov. 8 at Church of Our Savior in Mount Auburn.
HORSEPLAY:
Well, oops. Looks like the celebs were right to chicken out.
Referring here to the Shur-Good Celebrity Stakes, the annual River Downs do where media types ride thoroughbreds in a 1 - 16th mile race for charity.
Problem is, thoroughbreds are skittish and most media types don't ride, so most refuse when promoter Rob Riggsbee asks, leading Psst! to speculate last week that the event was doomed.
Wellsir, on Friday Ranger Bob (WOFX-FM) just sort of slipped off the back end of the horse. No injury there.
Bobby Schmitt of Shur-Good wasn't as lucky. His horse, aptly named Tornado, threw him at the finish line. He was down 45 minutes before paramedics hauled him to the hospital.
He's OK now, but remembers little, save what he saw of the mishap on the news that night.
But, since Schmitt's company funds the prize, and since it was he who went down, well, this was the last Stakes and Bobby's last ride. ON THE MOVE: Well dang, film student and Hyde Park native Carrie Shoemaker isn't even out of school and already she has some major coups on her resume.
A week or so ago, the second-year Ohio University honors student breezed back into town after working 3 1/2 weeks at the Cannes Film Festival, where she was invited to work the American Pavilion. "There were 82 of us overall, working 6 1/2 hours a day," she says. "The beauty of it is you meet everyone -- Billy Zane, Johnny Depp, Martin Scorsese, John Travolta, Emma Thompson -- and get invited to all the parties.
Now she's off to an internship in Los Angeles where she'll work with a production house doing "Anything they need done. But you get invited to all the parties and premieres, so I know I'll meet a lot of people there too."
As she did at Telluride last summer when she did a student symposium there. And as she will at Sundance, where she's a tentative for next January.
"My goal is to do all the major festivals. Sundance is the last one, and I think my chances are good."
Apparently.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE
