A swashbuckling, musical tale of romance, humor, and beautifully tongue-twisting lyrics is set to entrance June 14 and 16 audiences at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center, with Opera Quad Cities presenting, as its annual summertime entertainment, Gilbert & Sullivan's classic operetta The Pirates of Penzance.

Folk rock troubadour Jesse Marchant headlines a Moeller Nights concert at Davenport's Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel on June 19.

Appearing as rare summertime guests in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artists series, the Rock Island-based organization welcomes the New Orleans jazz ensemble Jazzy Ash & the Leaping Lizards to the Quad Cities, with the popular touring artists and celebrated children's musicians bringing their smoky yet distinctly family-friendly styling to a half-dozen area venues between June 15 and 19.

Winner of six 2013 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score for pop icon Cyndi Lauper in her first outing as a Broadway composer, the high-kicking musical Kinky Boots finds its touring production commanding the stage at Davenport's Adler Theatre on June 19, a work that Entertainment Weekly called “cause for celebration” and that Time Out New York labeled “the very model of a modern major musical.”

Is it a success or a failure when a ghost appears during a séance if you don’t actually believe in the occult? The Richmond Hill Players allow you to decide for yourself with their latest production: a delightful take on the ghostly comedy Blithe Spirit.

Given the relatively close proximity of their release dates, to say nothing of their both being about gay rock icons of the '70s, Rocketman is almost inevitably going to be compared to last fall's Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury salute Bohemian Rhapsody. If the latter was a musical bio-pic, though, the former is most definitely a bio-pic musical, and as such, it's sentimental, corny, kind of silly, and frequently campy beyond belief. It is, in other words, exactly what you want from a celebration of the early life and music of Elton John – an explosive pop fantasia of deep tenderness, unapologetic shamelessness, and unbridled love for its subject.

Cassini stands in isolation in a wooded area on Beacon Harbor Parkway in East Moline near the Mississippi River. The sculpture is approximately 20’ in height, but feels even larger when standing near it. Its mathematically-inspired forms and rhythms are hypnotic. The sculpture’s curved strips form a whole. Yet in regarding the whole, one is drawn back to its interlocking elements or to the interior space created by these forms.

Described by Variety magazine as “warmhearted and uplifting” and by Chicago Theatre Review as “pitch perfect” and “a must-see,” the 2001 musical charmer The Spitfire Grill – based on the much-loved 1996 movie – is set to delight audiences at Moline's Spotlight Theatre June 7 through 16, a show that inspired New York magazine to state, “What even in normal times would be a joy is, in these troubled ones, sheer nourishment.”

One of the area's most vitally important and well-attended charitable summertime events kicks off in front of Moline's TaxSlayer Center on June 8, with the amphitheater's exterior the starting point for the 2019 Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Quad Cities, designed to help raise funds for breast-cancer education, research, advocacy, health services, and social-support programs.