Original works from more than 80 juried regional and national artists, children's activities, a Tabor Wines tasting, gourmet food, live music with Whoozdads? and other area performers, and additional treats will be on hand at the September 15 and 16 Riverssance Festival of Fine Art, with MidCoast Fine Arts' 31st-annual Lindsay Park event finding Rachel Mullins Steiner this year's recipient of the esteemed Harley Award in recognition of her visionary leadership in creating an area arts culture.

A two-day celebration of a most dexterous musical instrument, the area's inaugural Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival – taking place at Augustana College's Larson Hall September 14 and 15 – will treat lovers of the sax to master classes, workshops, discussions, and recitals, with the fest's guest artist, renowned saxophonist/composer Nick Zoulek, described by the Wall Street Journal as “stunningly virtuosic, whatever the genre.”

Touring in conjunction with the September 1 release of her sophomore album A Million Miles Away, singer/songwriter/guitarist Elizabeth Moen serves as the headliner for a Moeller Nights concert on September 15, with the Iowa native's gifts inspiring The Culture Trip to write, “Elizabeth Moen is one of those rare artists whose voice, from the first moment you hear it, consumes your entire being, doing away with all previous thoughts and concerns, and leaving you short of breath.”

It's almost inconceivable, and a little perverse, that the same actor who was so convincing as a Jewish bookkeeper in Schindler's List, the heroine's father in Anne Frank, and freakin' Moses could also be wholly persuasive as Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect behind Hitler's Final Solution. But considering his additional screen roles have ranged from Mahatma Gandhi to gangster Meyer Lansky to film pioneer Georges Méliès, Ben Kingsley has always demonstrated a virtuosic talent for playing ethnically diverse real-life figures – a skill that's both the chief pleasure and biggest moral hazard in the engaging, slightly infuriating post-war thriller Operation Finale.

Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a 2006 Tony Award for star Cynthia Nixon, David Lindsay-Abaire's moving, haunting, unexpectedly funny family drama Rabbit Hole enjoys a September 6 through 8 staging at St. Ambrose University's Studio Theatre, the New York Times praising the work for its “honesty, accuracy, and humor” while adding that the show “inspires such copious weeping among its audience that you wonder early on if you should have taken a life jacket.”

A quintet of superb artists, working in a variety of mediums, will collectively showcase their works in the group exhibition Earth Wind & Fire, on display from September 1 through 28 at the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy, and boasting new pieces of Dean Kugler, Bill Wolford, Bonnie Grebner, Heidi Grandt, and Karen Brinson.

Delightful, fanciful, whimsical, and ingratiatingly goofy works of art will be showcased at Rozz-Tox from September 7 through 30, as the Rock Island venue and the Art Legacy League host the combined art show and sale The Crazy Heads Story, a collection of colorfully original pieces by artists trained by the late Father Ed Catich – Amy Nielsen and Paul Herrera – as well as the St. Ambrose University Art Department founder himself.

Playing past hits along with songs from the group's most recent release Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not – a work that, according to ConsequenceOfSound.net, “continues the band's decades-long path of great records” – the alternative rockers of Dinosaur Jr. play a Codfish Hollow Barn concert on September 10, their latest album described by The Quietus as “a perfect synthesis of all the incredients that have made them one of the most intriguing and long-lasting guitar bands in recent history.”