Held in honor of the late Quad Cities native commonly known as “The Jazz Professor,” Polyrhythms hosts a collection of inspired jazz talents in this year's Bill Bell Jazz & Heritage Festival, an August 17 through 19 weekend celebration at Rock Island's Martin Luther King Jr. Park and Davenport's Redstone Room boasting cultural presentations, family activities, and concert sets with musical luminaries including Chicago great Frank Russell.

Performing a special August 17 concert presented by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, the Nashville-based blues-rock trio Too Slim & the Taildraggers plays Bettendorf's Harley Corin's in support of the musicians' latest album High Desert Heat, a release RockAndBluesMuse.com called “a testament to the power and gravity that only comes with time,” and Blues Blast magazine lauded with “The sound is big, the sound is rocking, and the band gives a no-holds-barred performance.”

In 1992, the District of Rock Island hosted its very first outdoor festival with the debut of its Caribbean-themed celebration Ya Maka My Weekend. Twenty-six years later, the District's longest-running annual tradition will continue with the 2018 Ya Maka My Weekend on August 11, an event boasting a marketplace, arts and crafts vendors, ehtnic food of all flavors, and concert sets by four sizzling ensembles of musicians.

Winner of three 2009 Tony Awards and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the wildly acclaimed Broadway hit Next to Normal receives its debut staging at Moline's Black Box Theatre August 9 through 18, the New York Times raving that this pop/rock musical “throbs with an emotional intensity” and “is steeped in an inescapable, aching compassion for people crippled by pain.”