Cincinnati composer and founding member of MUSE Cincinnati’s Women’s Choir Therese Edell passed away last month after an extended battle with MS. She was 61. Considered a pioneer of “Women’s Music,” Edell was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Cincinnati in 1969 to attend CCM. Edell and longtime collaborator Betsy Lippitt toured the country and were favorites at Women’s Music festivals. Her releases include 1970’s Prophecy’s Child and 1978’s milestone From Women’s Faces, as well as the 1990 For Therese, a compilation of her songs performed by various fans/supporters as a 40th birthday present.

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Multifaceted Hip Hop artist Ill Poetic’s creative mix skills have been on display again recently. Just a week ago, he released the above remix of genre-bending Hip Hop jazzers IsWhat?!'s “Fanta,” the first release from the group’s forthcoming Big Appetite album, which comes out in Europe a little later this year and in the States sometime in 2010. IsWhat?! sent out some “stems” from the song and asked for remixes. Unsurprisingly, Ill Poetic’s is one of the best.

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The sixth season of TV One's entertaining and informative Unsung series, showcasing artists who did well but didn't quite reach the heights many expected, kicks off tonight at 10 p.m. with an episode about the late, great Soul star Isaac Hayes. Next week, on Jan. 30, the series focuses on a group that was formed at Kentucky State University and ended up calling Cincinnati its home base — Midnight Star.

The R&B/ElectroFunk nine-piece band was a major success in the ’80s, giving the music world massive hits like "Slow Jam," "No Parking on the Dance Floor" and "Freak-a-Zoid." But the band eventually splintered — due to "arguments over money and management," according to the Unsung synopsis — with Reggie Calloway and brother Vincent leaving and eventually forming Calloway (which had success with the smash "I Wanna Be Rich" in 1989).

Midnight Star carried on and produced a couple more albums that featured R&B chart hits before taking a break. The "hiatus" ended in 2000 and Midnight Star continues to this day, performing most recently at the Macy's Music Festival last summer. Click here to read up on the band circa 2013.

The Unsung series has a loose definition of "unsung" (as the Isaac Hayes episode suggests), but its profiles of various R&B/Soul, Hip Hop, Funk and Gospel artists are always fairly illuminating. The show has dedicated episodes to a wide range of successful artists, from The Ohio Players and Zapp to Kool Mo Dee and Big Daddy Kane to George Clinton, The Spinners and another Cincinnati-affiliated star, Bootsy Collins.


Unsung (Documentary) - Bootsy Collins... by GENERATIONDISCOFUNK

The rest of Unsung's season six includes episodes on EPMD, Lou Rawls, Eddie Kendricks, The Whispers, Mint Condition, Johnny Gill and a special two-hour look at the Disco phenomenon.

TV One is channel 217 for local Time Warner Cable subscribers (1217 for the HD channel).

In a lot of ways, Cincinnati's Over the Rhine belonged to the world almost as soon as they birthed its spectacular debut album, 1991’s Patience. There wasn't really an evolutionary period involving chops-honing and building an audience with local bar gigs every weekend before becoming a songwriting and performing powerhouse that could stand toe-to-toe with its peer group on the national level. Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler sprang fully formed from Zeus’ forehead as a mature and supremely talented duo with the undeniable ability to mingle heartache and joy with words and music and find an indelible way to invest each emotion with a taste of the other.

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Brian Olive, a founding member of The Greenhornes and later a member of the Soledad Brothers (under the stage-name Oliver Henry), is releasing a self-titled solo album on June 23. The CD will be put out by Alive Records, also home to Cincy's Buffalo Killers.

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Local RCA Records recording artists Walk the Moon surprised fans today by announcing that they have teamed with video service VEVO to premiere its new, self-titled album, which hits stores this coming Tuesday. The album is being premiered as a "series of officially unofficial videos, hand-made, band-made by yours truly without a film crew or a budget."

Check out the full Walk the Moon album below (in playlist form).

The group behind last fall's successful effort to erect a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame historical marker at the former King Records studio is at it again. They're now hoping to memorialize Herzog Studios' contributions to local and national music history.

At a press conference downtown this morning, leaders of the Cincinnati Music Heritage Foundation announced plans for a marker at 811 Race St., where in the 1940s and ’50s Herzog Studios hosted recording sessions by Hank Williams, Patti Page, Ernest Tubbs, Flatt and Scruggs and other notable "Country & Western" acts.

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Music Tonight: Just four short years ago, Marbin — performing tonight at The Greenwich in Walnut Hills — came together in Israel when two musicians met just when both were in coming-of-age “crossroads” periods in their lives. Israeli saxophonist Danny Markovitz had just completed his military service (he was an infantry sergeant) when he met Israeli-American guitarist Dani Rabin, who had also just been through a rigorous experience, graduating with a degree from The Berklee College of Music. In 2008, the Marbin duo re-situated themselves in the U.S., landing in Chicago. Since then, the work hasn’t stopped, as Marbin spends around 250 days a year performing (in the Windy City region and across the States).

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Walk the Moon was one of my personal highlights from the recent MidPoint Music Festival, where the band played a high-energy set wonderfully showcasing its dance-friendly beats, New Wave jubilance and Art Pop creativity. As solid as the foursome is live, I was still a bit stunned by how advanced, imaginative and proficient Walk the Moon comes across on its enchanting debut album, i want! i want!, which is to be released Saturday in conjunction with a multimedia event at The Mockbee.

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It's official — the Heartless Bastards are indeed still "from Cincinnati." When the band appeared on David Letterman's Late Show Tuesday night, Dave walked over at the end of their performance and asked, "You're from Austin?" Both Erika Wennerstrom and bassist Jesse Ebaugh corrected him by saying, "We're from Cincinnati."

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