Opera is the operative word for June. Cincinnati Opera kicks off its 93rd season with expanded venues, programming and some of the hottest singers on the scene.  

Both Smith and Mapplethorpe found their place, of course, and became famous — she as a quintessential alternative-rocker and he as one of the country’s top fine-art photographers.   

The story has long been set in Rock & Roll lore: Ian Curtis, lead singer for Joy Division, hanged himself the day before the Manchester, England-based band was to embark on its first tour of America.  

Peruse the club listings and ads on Facebook and in the pages of your favorite altweekly and you’ll notice that dance clubs have taken to the apocalyptic theme particularly strongly. If you attend such a shindig, the last music you will ever hear will be some other dude or dudette’s playlist.   

After one of the best summers for music in Cincinnati in a long time, autumn is going to have to offer up a lot of cool musical happenings to avoid season envy. Luckily for those of us who live and love Greater Cincinnati, it appears the momentum of the summer is definitely going to carry over.   

Music of Change: Hymns, Blues & Rock at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center ultimately succeeds in providing a fascinating journey through the roles black music have played in America’s history, eloquently showing how African-American music has been celebration, protest, spiritual uplift, a means of communication and information sharing … sometimes all at once.  

“May we all find salvation in professions that heal.” When Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin penned these lyrics in 1987, few knew that she was hinting at some long-held, “dirty secrets,” problems that went back to the singer’s teenage years and, indeed, would require “salvation,” specifically the help of psychiatrists and therapists and anti-depressants. Colvin’s new memoir, Diamond In The Rough, describes that journey in an endlessly fascinating, often-harrowing recollection of one woman’s arduous musical odyssey.  

Based on sound alone, The Donkeys come off as pretty mature. The San Diego band plays a tender, starlit kind of Rock with a folky side that isn’t too sleepy, an AltCountry side that isn’t too twangy, a Blues side that isn’t too reverb-heavy and a Psych Rock side that isn’t too psychedelic.   

People about to change the world rarely look like people about to change the world. Take Gold Shoes — central casting didn’t assemble a new millennium Monkees to storm the music world with calculated precision. Gold Shoes is comprised of oddly yet perfectly meshed parts.   

 Australian Pop/Rock band Men At Work hit me — and many other music fans around the world — at just the right time. I was 12 when the single “Who Can It Be Now?” exploded onto the charts. I was intrigued by the group’s quirkiness, but it was singer/guitarist Colin Hay’s voice that initially drew me in.