Playing Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow a mere four months after the release of their fall album OHBAHOY – a collection described by Maximum Volume Music as “such a staggeringly diverse 11 songs that you can only marvel at it” – the Rockford, Illinois-based talents of Miles Nielsen & the Rusted Hearts headline a rare basement concert on February 1, the band sure to deliver what Americana-UK calls “smooth, well-written, and well-produced power-pop packages.”

Described by Broadway Baby as “an emotional, hard-hitting study of innocence lost and the survival of hope in even the most hellish conditions,” author Celeset Raspanti's haunting, moving, and uplifting I Never Saw Another Butterfly serves as the season-opening stage presentation at Moline's Black Box Theatre, its January 24 through February 1 run showcasing the works of art and poetry created by Jewish children who lived in the concentration camp Theresienstadt.

Drawing from the human figure has long been part of the traditional training for artists, and in the Figge Art Museum's fascinating new exhibition Figuratively Drawn: Works from the Figge Collection, on display from April 13 through April 19, guests of the Davenport venue will explore the infinitely varied ways that the body can be portrayed by artists who use the human form as a jumping-off point and drawing as their medium.

Over a legendary career that produced nine symphonies, 16 string quartets, and 32 piano sonatas, Ludwig van Beethoven completed only one opera, and the story of its creation – and the immense toll it took on its composer – will be told in the German American Heritage Center's“Return into Your Prison Now!” The Long Battle for Beethoven's 'Fidelio,' a January 26 presentation by noted Quad Cities composer and Augustana College associate professor Dr. Jacob Bancks.