Lauded by the Wall Street Journal as “charming and dramatically persuasive,” and by the New York Daily News as “a valentine to the wonder and weirdness of love,” the 2014 Tony Award nominee for Best Play Outside Mullingar opens the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's long-awaited 2021 season, the show's August 5 through 15 run – the Geneseo company's first new show since 2019 – sure to demonstrate why the New York Times called it a work of “lyrical writing” and “consistent pleasure.”

Winner of five 2013 Tony Awards and London's record-holder for the most Olivier Awards ever won by a musical, the Broadway smash Matilda: The Musical continues Quad City Music Guild's summer of live performances at Moline's Prospect Park Auditorium, its August 6 through 15 run treating family audiences to a delightful entertainment that the New York Times called “an exhilarating tale of empowerment” told with “astonishing slyness and grace.”

Returning to a weekend of live performances following last year's virtual version of the event, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival will, from August 5 through 7, again enjoy residency at the Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center, with the Davenport venue hosting no fewer than 25 individual sets by nine assemblages of thrilling jazz talents.

Unforgettable hits such as “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “All Shook Up,” and other classics will have Coralville Center for the Performing Arts audiences dancing in the aisles during the August 7 stage celebration Joseph Hall: Rock N Roll Remember, a salute to the King of Rock 'n' Roll led by one of the United States' most lauded tribute artists and a former competitor on America's Got Talent.

A chart-topping country star wraps up both the Mississippi Valley Fair's grandstand concert series and the 2021 fair itself with the August 8 arrival of Craig Morgan, the singer/songwriter and acoustic guitarist responsible for such Billboard top-10 hits as My Kind of Livin', That's Why, and This Ole Boy.

The rare genre-crossing performer who has been awarded both a Grammy Award and a Latin Grammy Award in additional to numerous additional accolades, hip-hop, pop, and crunk musician Pitball headlines the August 7 grandstrand concert at the Mississippi Valley Fair, the artist's credits including the chart-topping Pitbull Starring in Rebelution and Global Warming and the double-platinum-selling Planet Pit.

Appearing as the fifth grandstand act in this year's Mississippi Valley Fair, the chart-topping country musicians of Old Dominion perform hits from their acclaimed, three-album repertoire on August 6, the popular touring ensemble having scored four Academy of Country Music Awards and eight top-10 Billboard singles over the past six years.

Boasting 16 number-one singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts, the most of any band in history, the post-grunge and alternative-metal icons on Shinedown perform the August 5 grandstand concert at the Mississippi Valley Fair, the group's list of chart-topping songs including “Get Up,” “Monsters,” “Attention Attention,” and 2020's “Atlas Falls.”

With their most recent album, 2019's Brothers, described by SoundsLikeNashville.com as a recording that showcases the duo's “talent for delivering exuberance in their music” and “positive spirits and honest chemistry,” Nashville's Locash serves as the Mississippi Valley Fair's August 4 grandstand headliners, performing from a repertoire that has found chart-topping hits in “I Know Somebody” and “One Big Country Song.”

A much-lauded poet and novelist who hails from Marshalltown, Iowa, Native American writer Ray Young Bear will be the special guest in a July 29 virtual poetry reading hosted by Davenport's Figge Art Museum, the author 's works having been previously published in periodicals including Parnassus, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review.

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