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With the fruits of our non-laborious labors landing in your laps (or on your laptops) just in time for gift-giving week, your intrepid theatre correspondents Rochelle Arnold, Pamela Briggs, Madeline Dudziak, and I officially welcome you to the sixth-annual Reader Tony Awards! Now returned to full fighting strength after 2020's truncated-by-necessity ceremony!

Held in memory of Chamber Music Quad Cities founder Connie Sauer-Adams, the mother of the ensemble's artistic directors Gregory and Thomas Sauer, CMQC's January 2 winter concert at Davenport's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral will feature Sauer-Adams' sons performing alongside their gifted musician wives Serena Canin and Lee Taylor, and will deliver a thrilling program of Mozart (“Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K 493), Schubert (“Strong Trio in B-flat Major, D. 471), and Chopin (“Piano Sonata in B Minor, Op. 58).

Classic-rock fans seeking New Year's Eve satisfaction will be able to find it, literally, at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center when the venue hosts the tribute artists of Satisfaction: The International Rolling Stones Show, a December 31 party celebrating the legendary talents behind “Gimme Shelter,” “Jumpin' Jack Flash,” “You Can't Always Get What You Want,” and dozens of other timeless hits.

Court-ing fans in their eagerly anticipated return to Moline, the electrifying athletes of the Harlem Globetrotters bring their spectacular "Spread Game Tour" to the TaxSlayer Center on January 1, thrilling the New Year's Day crowd with phenomenal basketball action, comic high jinks, ankle-breaking moves, jaw-dropping swag, and rim-rattling dunks in a fully-modernized amphitheater production.

A beautiful exhibition of four large-scale paintings depicting the four seasons, along with a collection of smaller canvases, Elaine Miller: Uncommon Ground will be on display at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center through January 29, the Chicago-based saying of her work, ”I paint to try to engage the spiritual qualities of nature that overwhelms our everyday existence whenever we can stop and notice.”

Touring in support of their critically acclaimed 2021 album Happy Birthday, Ratboy that Pitchfork praised for blending “cozy nostalgia with their hard-rocking instincts,” as well as for its songs that “have a glowing warmth even when the guitars roar,” the rockers of Ratboys headline a December 22 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, with the Chicago musicians lauded by DIY magazine for tracks that “manage to be swashbuckling and irresistible.”

Happily, and gratefully, this is a film clearly made by people who both adore its 60-year-old predecessor and still saw 21st-century room for improvement.