With the presentation featuring rare filmed and recorded performances by one of the most iconic orchestras in history, Gates Thomas' program Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn will be delivered at the Black Hawk College Quad Cities Campus on February 27, the public invited on this unforgettable journey through an extraordinary body of American music.

Documenting the urgent efforts to combat coral decline in local fishing communities from Hawaii, Kenya, Australia and Indonesia, director Stephen Shearman's Reef Builders serves as a final presentation in River Action's QC Environmental Film Series for 2026, this fascinating exploration of the hexagonal structure known as a Reef Star screening in St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center on March 1.

With Entertainment Weekly calling the 2001 Christopher Nolan classic "one of those jigsaw puzzles whose pieces snap together more tightly with each viewing," the iconic thriller Memento enjoys a March 5 screening as part of the community series Filmosofia, this evening at Rock Island's Rozz-Tox also featuring a reading discussion on the movie's philosophical themes hosted by Augustana College's Dr. Deke Gould.

A Tony Award winner hailed by Variety magazine as “elegant, acerbic, and entertainingly fueled on pure bile,” Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage opens the 2026 season at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre, the comedy's February 27 through March 8 run treating audiences to a Broadway hit that, according to the New York Times, “delivers the cathartic release of watching other people's marriages go boom."

As I write this, Governor JB Pritzker is preparing to give his annual budget address. It’s an unenviable task. Earlier this month, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget released a report showing federal tax cuts caused a $587 million reduction in state revenues this fiscal year.

With Barely There Theatre's latest presentation landing, as its company originator and playwright says, "just in time to be late for Valentine's Day," busy area-theatre participant (and Reader theatre reviewer) Alexander Richardson brings the world premiere of his first-ever script, word play, to Moline's Black Box Theatre February 19 through 28.

Sharing his musical gifts in a pair of 45-minute performances plus a full-length concert evening at Davenport's TMBC Lincoln Resource Center, acclaimed pianist Barron Ryan returns to the area for Quad City Arts' 2025-26 Visiting Artists Series, this lauded musical sensation hailed by Kensington Concert Series director Gary Payne for the "emotive quality of his playing," and the musician recognized as one of Smithsonian magazine's 10 “Innovators to Watch."

Touring in support of their forthcoming album The Long Surrender, the group's tenth full-length recording set for release on March 27, the alternative, Americana, and Christian rockers of NEEDTOBREATHE headline a February 26 concert event at Davenport's Capitol Theatre, accolades for the popular, Grammy-nominated act including a Billboard Music Award nomination for Rivers in the Wasteland and no fewer than 15 wins at the GMA Dove Awards.

Performing, in its entirety, an album that was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," the touring artists of The Black Jacket Symphony brings their stage rendition of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon to Davenport's Capitol Theatre on February 20, this legendary rock recording also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.