Delivering what All About Jazz calls “a definite fresh sound by a guy who should be in everyone's playlist,” pianist Josh Nelson and his outfit the Josh Nelson Trio present a public concert at Davenport's Redstone Room on April 4 and three additional area performances April 3 through 5, treating music lovers to the talents of an artist who, according to Jazz Times, “distinguishes himself as a first-rate player and composer with a fresh, wholly personal take on the music.”

Wrapping up a 2018-19 Masterworks season that has boasted legendary works by some of the world's most noted composers, the musicians of the Quad City Symphony Orchestra, on April 6 and 7, will turn their collective attention to the Quad Cities themselves in Quad Cities Past & Present, a repertoire featuring the world premiere of a QCSO-commissioned work by Chicago-based composer James M. Stephenson.

For their final concerts in the group's 2018-19 season, the gifted vocalists of the professional ensemble the Nova Singers bring their talents “where the heart is” in April 6 and 7 presentations of Home – a moving and thrilling repertoire augmented by guest violinist Mariela Shaker (who will share some of her experiences as a Syrian refugee) and the world premiere of a new work by renowned composer Carol Barnett.

Best known as the founder, lead singer/songwriter, and guitarist of punk-rock outfit Against Me!, Laura Jane Grace and her Florida-based band The Devouring Mothers play an April 9 Moeller Nights concert at the East Moline venue The Rust Belt, the artist's 2016 album Shape Shift with Me called “densely packed, vicious, and heartbreaking” by Pitchfork magazine, and Grace herself notable for being one of the first highly visible punk rock musicians to publicly identify as transgender.

A Tony Award nominee and Pulitzer Prize finalist will be the special guest in three presentations at Augustana College on March 29 through 30, as the college hosts readings, a playwriting workshop, and an evening celebration with Sarah Ruhl, the author of such critically acclaimed stage productions as Eurydice, Clean House, Dead Man's Cell Phone, and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play).

Classical composers, iconic characters, and an assemblage of phenomenal dancers and musicians will combine in the latest presentation by the area talents of Ballet Quad Cities and Orchestra Iowa: Peter & the Wolf, Mother Goose, & Other Tales, which will enjoy two March 30 performances at Davenport's Adler Theatre and unite crowds in appreciation of the joys, terrors, and wonders of children's stories and fairytales.

A lauded stage work in which, according to the New York Times, “music, words, and performance meld into a spectrum of clashing emotions” and composer Jason Robert Brown “confirms his sparkling facility as a composer, fluidly mixing diverse styles,” The Last Five Years plays locally in a March 28 through April 7 presentation at Moline's Black Box Theatre, the two-character piece described by Variety as “bittersweet and nearly perfect.”

A Tony Award-winning modern classic will enjoy a special presentation at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre on March 29 and 30, as Bridges Collective and TOH (Testimonies of Hope) Argow's House present author Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, the poetic meditation on African-American life that the New York Daily News called “a triumphant event” and Time magazine deemed “a pognant, gripping, angry, and beautiful work.”

Beautiful and evocative works by a pair of natural-landscape painters – one a native Canadian, one hailing from Moline – will adorn the walls of the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy from March 30 through April 26, with the Bettendorf venue inviting us all to “Think spring!” in the new exhibition Prairie Light: Pam Ohnemus & Cynthia Starkweather-Nelson.

A contributing appraiser for PBS' popular, Emmy Award-nominated series Antiques Roadshow, Arlie Sulka appears as the special guest in the Figge Art Museum's March 28 Scholar Talk, lending her knowledge of rare artworks to a presentation devoted to pieces in the Davenport venue's current exhibition Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection.

Pages