A legendary theatrical work that won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–1963 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens the 2025-26 season at Iowa City's Riverside Theatre, this savagely funny and painfully emotional drama helmed by Riverside's artistic director Adam Knight and featuring venue favorites Tim Budd and Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers.

Presented as part of the German American Heritage Center's popular "Kaffee und Kuchen" series, the September 14 program 20th Century German Expressionism will find Western Illinois University's Keith Holz addressing moments in the history of German Expressionist art from the 1905 founding of Die Brücke in Dresden to glimmers of its renewed popularity in European museums today.

Revered for its Oscar-winning black-and-white chiaroscuro cinematography, and currently boasting a 96-percent "freshness" rating on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic Shanghai Express continues the “From Hitler to Hollywood” film series hosted by the German American Heritage Center, its September 17 screening at Davenport venue The Last Picture House treating audiences to a work that made New York magazine's 2020 list of "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."

If you're a fan of the 1989 marital slapstick The War of the Roses, which has to rank among the nastiest and funniest black comedies ever released by a major Hollywood studio, the opening minutes of director Jay Roach's and screenwriter Tony McNamara's re-imagining The Roses are both enormously satisfying and preemptively disappointing.

Two classic piano concertos, two world premieres by female composers, and the Quad Cities debut of a new saxophone concerto are among highlights of the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's (QCSO's) 111th season, which will formally begin with its first Masterworks program on October 4 and 5.

On September 5, Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox will host a release party for the Quad Cities' fine- and experimental-arts publication Undercurrent, an insightful new magazine that includes resources for artists, upcoming regional events, and local arts-community news.

Best known as the founder, lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and main songwriter of the rock band Alice in Chains, Jerry Cantrell brings his eagerly anticipated "I Want Blood" tour to Davenport's Capitol Theatre on September 10, his credits including several solo albums and appearances on chart-topping records by such varied acts as Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Glenn Danzig, and Deftones.

His sophomore album Neon Blue hailed by Holler Country as "a crash course in pure country from one of the music university’s finest and most knowledgeable professors," singer/songwriter Joshua Hedley returns to Davenport to headline a September 7 concert at the Raccoon Motel, the artist's 2022 recording also inspiring Pitchfork to rave that "the pleasure of Neon Blue is how Hedley subtly twists country conventions, making retro-minded songs and sounds seem both familiar and fresh."

An evening of arresting avant-garde compositions by artists both visiting and local is set for Rozz-Tox on September 11, the Rock Island venue and OUTLETProgramme presenting a shared bill with the touring artists of Zoh Amba Sun Ensemble and Rock Island's own Randall Hall.