A deeply inspirational singer/songwriter, storyteller, and self-taught, award-winning multi-instrumentalist, blues legend Reverend Robert Jones headlines a special April 16 concert event presented by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, his engagement at Rock Island's Hauberg Estate celebrating the beauty, history, and unifying power of our shared cultural heritage by drawing from the wellsprings of folk, blues, spirituals, and beyond.

With the band's most recent album Egosystem hailed for songs that, according to Higher Plain Music, "veer from depressed and vacuumed-out acoustic moments to barrages of grungy walls of sound with glee," the independent alt-grunge outfit Tummyache headlines an April 21 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, Higher Plain Music adding that the ensemble's latest is "ragged, raucous, angry, and a bit knackered (in a great way) with everyday life."

A pair of gifted independent artists hailing from the Midwest will share an exciting co-headlining engagement at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox on April 23, with Circuit Des Yeux's Haley Fohr a vocalist, composer and singer/songwriter based in Chicago, and Netochka Nezvanova's Gabi Vanek an experimental bassoonist living in Iowa City.

Lauded by the L.A. Times as “stunning” and by the Chicago Tribune as “fabulous entertainment for the entire family” Branson, Missouri's wildly popular illusionist Rick Thomas brings his touring spectacle Mansion of Dreams to Davenport's Adler Theatre on April 24, the event delivering, up close and personal, some of most intriguing, innovative, and mind-blowing grand illusions in the world.

With the event co-presented by the Midwest Writing Center, the Quad Cities' longest-running reading series SPECTRA returns to Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on April 10, with Elizabeth Willis reading from her latest book Liontaming in America, longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award in poetry, Iowa Student Poet Ambassador Tanya Rastogi, and Sophia Best, whose first chapbook PINK BATHWATER won the Iowa Chapbook Prize.

Deemed "an excellent and compelling play" by the New York Post and "brilliant, powerful, and cinematic" by the Associated Press, Tony Award winner John Logan's dramatic thriller Never the Sinner enjoys an April 24 through 27 staging by the theatre talents at Scott Community College, this tale of the infamous Leopold & Loeb killing hailed by the New Yorker as a work that "sweeps the audience into the boys' friendship without losing sight of the brutal murder."

An Academy Award-winning musical romance that also earned the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, writer/director John Carney's modern classic Once enjoys a special April 24 screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, the laurels for this critical smash and audience favorite including being ranked third on Entertainment Weekly's 2008 list of the "25 Best Romantic Movies of the Past 25 Years."

You’ve probably read about the Republican Party implosion last week in suburban municipal and township campaigns, particularly in DuPage County.

Titanic received five 1997 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Book, and Score, and Spotlight director Noah Hill and musical director Amy Trimble had a boatload of logistics, decisions, and inspirations to sort out. Their staging of this intricate, visually stunning spectacle is exemplary.