Annual explosions of fun followed by literal explosions in the air will be taking place in Davenport's LeClaire Park and Quinlan Court and Rock Island's Schwiebert Riverfront Park when the Quad Cities hosts its Fourth of July celebration Red, White, & Boom!, the bi-state July 3 event delivering a spectacular fireworks display over the Mississippi River as well as live music, food and beverage vendors, special presentations, family programming, and more.
Designed to bring some serious swing into the summer, the John Deere Classic returns to Silvis' TPC at Deere Run from June 29 through July 3, with this professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour taking place two weeks before the Open Championship for the first time in its 50-year history.
Delivering a blend of local history, environmental issues, education, entertainment, and fresh air, Davenport's River Action is again presenting a series of outdoor presentations in the second month of the annual Channel Cat Talks and Riverine Walks: weekly programs that, from July 5 through 30, will address such topics as plastic pollution, native fish and trees, water-treatment operations, and the indigenous peoples of the Quad Cities.
Visitors to Davenport's Putnam Museum & Science Center can receive insight into problem solving and abstract thinking using mathematics, physics, and design with fun, simple building materials in the venue's Build! Create! Innovate!, an exhibition that, through September 4, boasts 3,600 square feet of building space and more than 15,000 KEVA Planks, along with photography of local architecture and a pre-built bridge, Kone Tower, and the Putnam’s iconic Velie automobile.
After a long winter, spring is finally in the air – and also in the halls and on the walls of Davenport's Putnam Museum & Science Center via Pollination Investigation, a fascinating exhibition hosted courtesy of the Smithsonian Gardens and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service through September 4.
As I’ve been telling my newsletter subscribers for several weeks now, talks began in mid-May about a possible special state legislative session to address the abortion issue.
“We're not the party of Trump,” Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie told an interviewer a couple of months ago. “I'm in the Republican Party and the party of Lincoln. And at the end of the day, the important thing is that we're standing up for ideas and ideals and not a personality. And that is what the Republican Party has been about for decades and what I believe we're going to be going forward.”
The Illinois Republican Party has successfully avoided being dragged into the hard-right camp at the state level for decades. Those days may be over.
The River Cities' Reader asked ccandidates for Rock Island County Sheriff 14 questions covering four topics and invited them to add an additional comment on any topic(s) of their choice. We greatly appreciate each candidate's participation. One of these three candidates will be the Rock Island County Sheriff for the next four years. Here's your chance to learn how each views the office and their role, should they prevail.
When I reached out for advice from longtime Illinois political pundit and reporter Rich Miller, he posted my e-mail to his well-traveled blog CapitolFax.com with the title “A little help?” I had asked Rich if he had any ideas, comments, or specific questions he thought we should include in an Illinois state senate and house candidate questionnaire. Within hours, there were dozens of questions from various perspectives posted. All of them are published below and the original blog post is found at CapitolFax.com/2022/05/17/a-little-help-3/.
One of the most exciting and moving of all classical-Greek tragedies will be staged in Rock Island's Lincoln Park from July 2 through 10 when Genesius Guild stages its masked drama Electra, the Sophocles masterpiece set a few years after the Trojan War, and a one-act act theatre experience that the L.A. Post noted as "unique among Greek tragedies for its emphasis on action."
I enjoy seeing a beloved musical that's so well-known I could easily sing along (though I never would). It's also fun seeing familiar faces and saying, "Hey, I know her!" "I acted with him!" Countryside Community Theatre's Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is that kind of show. It's both a classic and a family affair, as many summer productions with this company are.
For the company's latest presentation of free verse theatre in Iowa City's City Park, Riverside Theatre, from June 17 through July 3, invites audiences “once more unto the breach” for one of the boldest and most exhilarating works in the classical canon: William Shakespeare's Henry V, with this glorious outdoor production boasting a tremendously gifted cast led by Riverside Theatre veteran Katy Hahn in the title role.
A Tony-nominated stage sensation by the legendary composing team behind The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and other iconic titles, Rodgers & Hammerstein's State Fair enjoys a Clinton Area Showboat Theatre run from June 30 through July 17, this beloved musical delivering such treasured show-tune staples as "It's a Grand Night for Singing," "It Might as Well Be Spring," and the state-specific "All I Owe Ioway."
Winner of seven 1977 Tony Awards and one of the 25 longest-running productions in Broadway history, the iconic comic-strip adaptation Annie will be brought to life at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse June 30 through July 10, the show described by the New York Times as "an intensely likable musical" that's also "an unstoppable sunshine steamroller."
Currently traveling the country in their “Life Is a Merry-Go-Round” tour held in celebration of the band's recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the British psychedelic-pop icons of The Zombies play a special July 2 concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, the group renowned for such top-10 Billboard smashes as “She's Not There,” “Tell Her No,” and the chart-topping “Time of the Season.”
Described by Rolling Stone as blending “highbrow smarts with down-home stomp,” the Denver-based rockers of The Yawpers headline a July 3 concert set at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the musicians touring in support of their most recent album that led Pop Matters to rave, "the Yawpers are a great American rock and roll band, and Human Question is one of this year’s most accomplished releases."
With a lineup that ranges from Grammy and Downbeat Award winners to the Corridor’s top student performers, Summer of the Arts and GreenState Credit Union will present the Iowa City Jazz Festival July 1 through 3, this nationally renowned event returning to downtown Iowa City for its 31st year, and taking place on both the Ped Mall and South Clinton Street.
Although currently touring without two of its longtime members – bassist vocalist Josh Gilbert, who left the group in May, and drummer Jordan Mancino, who departed in early June – the Grammy-nominated metalcore musicians of As I Lay Dying will surely show no signs of slowing down during their July 5 set at East Moline venue the Rust Belt, touring the nation now in support of the band's most recent album Shaped by Fire.
Led by rock legend Buzz Osborne, who has been touring with his band for 39 years, and boasting the sterling musicianship of drummer Dale Grover and bassist Steven Shane McDonald, the sludge-metal and hardcore-punk musicians of the Melvins headline a July 6 concert event at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, with AllMusic.com writing of the iconic group, “Their ability to combine punk with a strong Black Sabbath influence had a major impact on everything from grunge to alternative metal to doom metal and stoner rock.”
Going to the cineplex or staying in and streaming this weekend? Every Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m. you can listen to Mike Schulz dish on recent movie releases & talk smack about Hollywood celebs on Planet 93.9 FM with the fabulous Dave & Darren in the Morning team of Dave Levora and Darren Pitra. The morning crew previews upcoming releases, too.
Or you can check the Reader Web site and listen to their latest conversation by the warm glow of your electronic device. Never miss a pithy comment from these three scintillating pundits again.
Thursday, June 30: Discussion of Elvis, The Black Phone, The Phantom of the Open, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and Good Lyck to You, Leo Grande.
There's plenty to conceivably gripe about, but those complaints feel moot in the face of the stellar, supremely emotional entertainment that Elvis' director and star deliver. And for their film's two hours and 39 minutes, Baz Luhrmann and Austin Butler deliver that entertainment again and again and again.
Writer/director Angus MacLane's adventure comedy has a built-in safety feature – a shield against irrationally high hopes – that was a lot more charming than I anticipated, because the way the film has been designed, it doesn't have to be the coolest family entertainment of 2022. It just has to suggest the coolest family entertainment of 1995.
This admittedly overlong, overstuffed outing is the most enjoyable Jurassic flick since Jurassic Park – and for my money, it provided about the same amount of dopey retro fun as the Tom Cruise smash that most reviewers are turning cartwheels over. At least in this one, we know where they bad guys come from.
Noted 20th-century photographer Aaron Siskind was quoted as saying, "Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever … . It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” This act of remembering will be on glorious display at the Figge Art Museum through July 3, with the Davenport venue housing works previously unseen in the Quad Cities via the arresting exhibition New Photography.
A trio of varied artistic mediums by a quartet of gifted Midwestern artists will be decorating the Quad City Arts International Airport Gallery through the fourth of July, with travelers and art lovers alike to delight in the sumi-e paintings of North Liberty, Iowa's Karen Kurka Jensen, the acrylic sculptural paintings of Chicago artist Sally Havlis, and the glass art vessels of Staunton, Illinois' father-and-son team James and Phillip Bruch Scheller.
Providing insight into our country’s past through the work of revered American artists including Thomas Cole, Severin Roesen, Albert Bierstadt, and John Frederick Kensett, the Figge Art Museum's current exhibition The Warner Foundation Collection: History in the Painting will be celebrated in an opening program on July 7, the Davenport venue's event boasting appetizers, a cash bar, and presentations by a number of special guest speakers.
Mexican/Latinx multidisciplinary artist Tlisza Jaurique will, from July 9 of 2022 to July 9 of 2023, employ her inherited indigenous upbringing and aesthetics in service of the Figge Art Museum's Decolonial Intervention, creating her own artistic intervention surrounding the Davenport venue's Spanish Vice Regal collection, reexamining the art in this space, and providing a different viewpoint that allows for a shared authority of the collection.
An artistic exploration into the lives of children raised in many different kids of circumstances, the Muscatine Art Center's new exhibition Where Children Sleep: Photographs by James Mollison will be on display through August 21, and stands as a revealing series of photos that share the diverse stories of youths living in different countries around the globe.
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