On September 20, Quad City Symphony fans are invited to experience an elegant evening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum in one of our area's most education-programming fundraisers: Soirée: Mission (Im)Possible, which boasts a cocktail hour, dinner, and performance, plus a paddle raise and live auction with Maestro Mark Russell Smith as auctioneer.

Held as part of the unique concert series held in Davenport's intimate and cozy Redstone Room, the September 19 Songwriter Sessions event will find Common Chord guests treat to a seated evening of tunes hosted by David G. Smith, with additionally winning performances delivered by Chris Avey, Jenny Shawhan, and Jack Morrow.

Delivering a genre-melding evening of hip hop, alternative rock, and big laughs, Davenport's Redstone Room will host a quartet of excitingly disparate acts on September 25, the Common Chord venue treating audiences to the music of Soultru, Durow, and Jantzonia, plus a set with the local comedians of Nightcaps Improv Comedy.

The familiar, beloved sounds of “Peggy Sue,” “Maybe Baby,” “Oh Boy,” and many other iconic '50s and '60s rock hits will successively fill Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse and Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse on September 25 and 26, the venue's concert events with Todd Meredith & the Rave Ons showcasing the dynamic talents of the headliner who memorably portrayed the lead in in Circa '21's 2008 musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.

With the event held in celebration of the 155th anniversary of Schuetzen Park, the Davenport locale will host a special outdoor concert with Nathan Windt on September 21, the Jahreszeiten der Musik: Seasons of Music program showcasing the talents of this accomplished baritone soloist and longtime professor and Director of Choral Activities at Davenport's St. Ambrose University who received the 2016 Faculty Member of the Year Award.

Touring in support of their sixth studio album You're Weird Now that will be released the day before their Davenport engagement, the indie rockers of Guerilla Toss headline a September 20 concert at the Raccoon Motel, this group that Henry Rollins called "one of the first great bands of the new century" also listed by Rolling Stone as one of the "10 Great Modern Punk Bands."

Delivering what The Big Takeover described as "brilliant weavings of the sound that has made Joy Division and The Cure so loved," the post-punk goth rockers of Vision Video return to Davenport's Raccoon Motel on September 23, with Pitchfork raving that the group "exhibits a radiance that distinguishes them from fellow black-lipstick aficionados."

Headlining a September 24 evening at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the Heligoats – what NPR called “a strange name for a guy strumming a guitar, but oddly befitting someone who stuffs his songs with so many sideways ideas and observations” – delivers acoustic indie rock courtesy of singer/songwriter Chris Otepka, whom NPR declared “writes songs that are brainy in the best way: clever without straining for cuteness, wry but never smug.”

Headlining an ever-popular two-day music festival at the Codfish Hollow Barn, the South Carolina-based ensemble SUSTO brings its Americana and alt-country stylings to Maquoketa on September 19 and 20, the venue's Fine 2-Day Fest demonstrating the musicians' skills that led Americana UK to call their 2023 release My Entire Life " a fantastic album" with "each song memorable and joyous."

Capturing the exhilarating fire and fury of favorites such as “Magic Man," “What About Love,” "Barracuda," and “Crazy on You," the tribute musicians of Heartless bring their driving beats, burning guitar riffs, and soaring vocals to Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse on September 20, the show also boasting classic songs Heart has covered by artists including Led Zeppelin and The Who.

Presenting a sonically gorgeous recital offered as part of the 13th-annual Live at Heritage Center Performing Arts Series, the University of Dubuque hosts an afternoon with noted organist Colin Andrews on September 21, the musician performing on the John and Alice Butler Pipe Organ that was dedicated in May of 2021 and boasts an astonishing 3,033 pipes.

Original works by nearly 100 juried regional and national artists will be on hand at the September 20 and 21 Riverssance Festival of Fine Art, with the 37th Lindsay Park event, hosted by Quad City Arts, boasting a children’s art-activity tent, food and beverage vendors, live music, and the presenting of Carolyn Krueger with the prestigious Harley Award, an honor given to an individual who has affected the arts and artists in the Quad Cities during their lifetime.

A series of beautiful and expressive serigraph prints by Black Hawk College alum Jae Florence Corales are on display in the college's ArtSpace Gallery through 26, with Pearl of the Orient Seas showcasing new works by the Filipino visual artist, graphic designer, and filmmaker currently based in Augusta, Georgia.

On September 25, art lovers are invited to Davenport's Figge Art Museum to hear artist Kristin Quinn reflect on the works in her exhibit Luminous Flux Paintings from the Watershed, with Figge Co-Senior Curator Joshua Johnson leading the conversation on this arresting collection designed to capture the sensation of the memory of a place – its mood, its texture, its atmosphere – through imagery and abstraction.

A beloved touring artist who has twice appeared on Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and has released three Netflix comedy specials including 2021's On the Rocks, acclaimed funnyman Brian Regan brings his quick-witted talents to Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on September 26, demonstrating why Vanity Fair called him “the funniest standup alive,” and Entertainment Weekly deemed him “your favorite comedian's favorite comedian.”

A botanist, artist, author, and ex-railroader who travels the world documenting plant life, Joey Santore is the host and producer of the YouTube channel Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, and on September 25, he'll be at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox with his live presentation Kill Your Lawn, exploring the inadequacies of lawn culture for anything other than the purposes of picnics, sports fields, and dog feces.

Hailed by Time Out New York as a "frisky, feminist crowd-pleaser" that's "enlightening and entertaining," the two-woman historical drama The Half-Life of Marie Curie enjoys its Quad Cities debut at Moline's Black Box Theare September 19 through 28, its playwright Lauren Gunderson the author of previously acclaimed Black Box productions including Silent Sky, I & You and The Revolutionists.

Winner of eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor (Frank Sinatra) and Supporting Actress (Donna Reed), Fred Zinnemann's 1953 classic From Here to Eternity continues the “From Hitler to Hollywood” film series hosted by the German American Heritage Center on September 24.

Lauded by Roger Ebert as "ambitious and inventive, and almost worth seeing just for Anjelica Huston's obvious delight in playing a completely uncompromised villainess," director Nicolas Roeg's The Witches enjoys an outdoor screening in Rozz-Tox's "Garden Cinema '90s Family Night" series on September 19, with Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus adding that "Roeg's dark and witty movie captures the spirit of Roald Dahl's writing like few other adaptations."

I’m coming a bit late to this (national current events having overtaken everything), but a lawsuit filed by House and Senate Republicans was recently tossed out by Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Jack Davis II. The suit sought to strike down a new law — Senate Bill 328 — backed by trial lawyers. The Republicans say they will appeal. The Republican lawsuit claimed that the majority Democrats had violated the Illinois Constitution’s “three readings rule.”

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