For the final presentations in the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's 2017-18 Masterworks season, conductor Mark Russell Smith and his gifted musicians celebrate legendary composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Masterworks VI: Postcards from Russia, a pair of April 7 and 8 concerts featuring showcase performances by 2017's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Medalist Daniel Hsu.

For the third mainstage production in its 2017-18 season, Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, from March 28 through May 12, will present the sixth presentation in a hugely successful musical-comedy series – The Church Basement Ladies in: Rise Up, O Men!, a follow-up to the Minnesota-set smash that, according to TwinCities.com, boasts “plenty of physical comedy” and “a lot of charm and humor.”

Unexpected, dark, and even horrific sides of Scott County history are currently being explored in a newly released book, and on March 29, Eastern Iowa author John Brassard Jr. will visit the LeClaire Community Library, telling real-life tales from his historical offering Murder & Mayhem in Scott County, Iowa.

Allies, enemies, and the United States' rapidly shifting standing on the global stage will be explored in the latest presentation by the World Affairs Council of the Quad Cities (WACQC), with internationally noted speaker and author Dr. J. Martin Rochester visiting Davenport's St. Ambrose University for the March 27 lecture “Gulliver's Travails: U.S. Foreign Policy in an Age of Globalization & Global Disorder.”