BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Looks like yet another musical Cincinnati woman is crashing through a few barriers.
Last week, recall, we had Cynthia Katsarelis, music director of Seven Hills Sinfonietta, surprising concert-goers in Bourgas, Bulgaria. She was the first woman to conduct a major orchestra there. Now we have Carol Dunevant, director of bands at Northern Kentucky University, conducting in Japan, where females at the podium are a plenty unusual sight.
How unusual? Try this: In prepping for the date, she met with Japanese students at NKU. She talked to one who concluded the session by asking, "Are you really a conductor? I never heard of such a thing." Dunevant and NKU's 45-member Symphonic Winds left Monday for concerts in Gifu and Toki. The program is an American do -- Leonard Bernstein, "My Old Kentucky Home," a few marches, some barn burner band pieces -- except for one piece by Brit Philip Sparke.
The Japanese may be unfamiliar with female conductors now, but by the time Dunevant leaves, it's a safe bet they'll be plenty familiar. That's because she's doing two clinics for young conductors while her students conduct master classes for high school musicians in Gifu and Toki.
That's not the only ground Dunevant is breaking. She's also a doctor of musical arts student at CCM with two years' work left. If she finishes the program, she says, she'll be the school's first female doctor in the wind studies program.
Dunevant and students are due home early next week.
That would be puppeteer Wayne Martin. Remember? He moved to Boston in 1994, but before that he was all over Cincinnati -- at zoo events, community theater, in-house dates at Procter & Gamble, commercials, conventions.
The Boston move is paying off. Nowadays he's doing 500 shows a year (two and three a day) including one we may see here.
That's Lil' Iguana, a 30-minute children's show starring an iguana name of Iggy. Martin is the voice and manipulator of the puppet. The deal is for a 13-week run on Boston's WABU-TV.
The reason it might turn up here is because it soon becomes available for syndication. A zillion shows a year do, but there's a difference here: WABU's general manager is Bob Gordon, longtime general manager of Channel 9 and the guy who put puppeteer Larry Smith, Martin's mentor, on the old Uncle Al Show.
Gordon still has contacts here and, as any one of them will tell you, doesn't often take no for an answer. News as it happens.
OUT OF BOUNDS:
So what we were wondering was, is the Johnny Bench Golf Tournament really moving to Ethiopia?
Reason we ask is because on Monday, day of the annual tourney, it rained. Again. As it has for the past umpteen years.
Which prompted Bench to wonder if he shouldn't move the tournament to Ethiopia or someplace (Florida maybe?) where they could use the rain.
Consensus among the golfers was no -- too far to travel for 18 holes -- but they all have to be sick of getting wet by now. Besides, those bright green polyester pants they wear tend to fade.
The Bench do, for the record, was at Blue Ash Golf Course, considered one of the top 50 public courses in the U.S.
The tournament benefits the Johnny Bench Scholarship Fund.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE
