A popular summertime weekend event making a welcome return in 2024, the Quad City Air Show roars back above and throughout the Davenport Municipal Airport on June 22 and 23, this exhilarating aerial celebration featuring airborne performances, aerobatic teams, helicopters, squadrons, information booths, vendors, musical entertainment, and much more.
With highlights from the eagerly awaited annual event including free concerts in the park, a Swedish Maypole celebration, a book signing, children's activities, and more, everyone is invited to attend the 2024 Bishop Hill Midsommar Music Festival on June 22, a family-friendly celebration of this Swedish holiday.
Authors of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and more will share their talents and help strengthen the talents of others during the Midwest Writing Center's 2023 David R. Collins Writers Conference at Augustana College's Sorensen Hall, a June 27 through 29 celebration of the written word boasting workshops, readings, book pitches, and more, with special events planned at several additional Quad Cities locales.
Delivering a blend of local history, environmental issues, education, entertainment, and fresh air, Davenport's River Action will again present a series of outdoor presentations in the first month-plus of the annual Channel Cat Talks and Riverine Walks: weekly programs that, from May 28 through June 29, will address such topics as local abolitionist freedom fighters, steamboating, birds of prey, infrastructure, and the Quad City River Bandits.
From May 28 through September 15, fascinating stories of struggle, perseverance, tragedy, and triumph will be shared at Davenport's German American Heritage Center in the venue's Immigration Then & Now: Finding Refuge in the Quad Cities, a meaningful, locally themed exhibition presented in partnership with World Relief Quad Cities and supported by the Moline Regional Community Foundation.
A state law essentially designed to prevent Republicans from appointing legislative candidates to the ballot after the March primary was ruled unconstitutional by a Sangamon County judge last week, but her ruling only applied to the fourteen Republican plaintiffs in the case who are running for the Illinois House and Senate.
Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch gave added meaning to the phrase “winning ugly” during last Wednesday’s early-morning hours. I’ve never seen anything like it, so let’s take a look. House members were told to be in their seats by noon on Tuesday after the Senate had easily passed the entire budget package on Sunday.
The World Health Organization's (WHO's) attempted global coup is mere days away. If you ever thought of calling your legislators, now would be an ideal time to express your objection to assigning emergency management to a foreign entity. For everyone's sake, leave politics out of it.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a stranger roll-call than last week’s House vote on Senate Bill 2978. The data privacy bill is an initiative of Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, and he was on the House floor during the debate. The far-right ginned up social-media opposition to the bill by claiming that it would allow non-citizens to vote. More than 1,400 electronic witness slips have so far been filed in opposition.
On May 28, 2023, my wife and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary at our home in Davenport with family and friends when we began to hear police and ambulance sirens racing downtown. News reports soon made it clear that there had been a horrific disaster: 324 Main Street, a 116-year-old, six-story building housing numerous low-income tenants partially collapsed from top to bottom. Given the gravitas of what had transpired in 2019 with the flood wall disaster and in 2023 with 324 Main St. disaster – both of which occurred on (former city administrator) Corrin Spiegel's watch as the top paid city official – compared to the school-age-girl-thin-skinned complaints in the finally released September 2023 demand letter, one could say Spiegel's demand letter is a “nothing burger.”
The Quad Cities’ summer-theatre season is finally underway and Quad City Music Guild’s production of A Little Night Music, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a book by Hugh Wheeler, and directed by Colleen Houlihan, is a good start to it, boasting strong performances and some killer vocals.
With freshly painted arches and some ghostly trees on the furthest front flats, set designer Miranda Callahan’s work on Medea was interesting enough to generally distract me from the gnats that were apparently immune to insect repellent.
Care to enjoy some frolicking, singing gorillas (and people) without leaving the QC? I suggest visiting the Spotlight Theatre for Tarzan: The Musical, an adaptation of the 1999 Disney animated film.
A Tony Award-winning classic that, according to the New York Telegram, "ranks with Dracula and sometimes sets your spine to as much tingling," author Maxwell Anderson's legendary stage chiller The Bad Seed enjoys a June 14 through 23 run at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre, this powerfully creepy entertainment the inspiration for an Oscar-nominated movie and a work shortlisted for the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Presenting its latest season of free summertime Shakespeare in Iowa City's Lower City Park, Riverside Theatre will thrill audiences with a stunning outdoor production of the Bard's historical tragedy Julius Caesar from June 14 through 30, this classic from 1599 having been performed over the years by such thunderous worldwide talents as Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, John Gielgud, and Denzel Washington.
On June 16, the music of the locally famous composer, musician, and band leader Professor Ernst Otto will once again fill the air at Davenport's Schuetzen Park, with several of Otto's best-known compositions performed by Dr. Marian Lee, the gifted pianist and associate professor of piano at St. Ambrose University.
With his outfit lauded by LAST.fm for their ability to "seamlessly blend and arrange the root elements of rock and roll while forging new territory," singer/songwriter Billy Allen and his band The Pollies headline a June 19 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the group also praised by LAST.fm for "songs that sound so natural and effortless that you don't notice the intrinsic complexity and massive undertaking that each track represents."
Touring in support of their fourth full-length recording, a self0titled release that The Musical Divide called "the kind of tight, fun album that's easy to enjoy" as well as "their best album yet," the alternative-country and cowpunk musicians of Vandoliers headline a June 20 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, with 2022's Vandoliers also inspiring Holler Country to deem the group "a band of remarkable agility."
Acclaimed by Taste of Country as "a natural storyteller" who is "capable of reaching every single fan without pulling a muscle," country singer/songwriter and Billboard sensation Drake White headlines a June 21 concert at East Moline venue The Rust Belt, the musician an inclusion among Rolling Stone’s "10 Country Artists You Need to Know" and the recipient of the British CMA Awards’ citation for International Song of the Year.
With his most recent album Blood, Sweat, & Beers lauded by Saving Country Music as "fun and raucous Southern-fried music meant to be listened to loud," outlaw-country and Southern-rock singer/songwriter Rob Leines headlines a June 21 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, Saving Country Music adding that his 2021 recording "may not help you solve the meaning of life, but it sure will make life a lot more entertaining."
Presented as the second of four Pride Month events in the Figge Art Museum's Free Film at the Figge series, the award-winning 2020 romantic drama Ammonite enjoys a June 16 screening in the Davenport venue's John Deere Auditorium, writer/director Francis Lee's film hailed by Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus for the "chemistry between Saoirse Ronan and a never-better Kate Winslet."
While I long ago stopped being surprised by Richard Linklater's ability to pull off the wildly improbable, if not seemingly impossible, it wasn't until his new-to-Netflix Hit Man that I imagined Linklater capable of a first-rate blend of Double Indemnity, Crimes & Misdemeanors, and Tootsie. I didn't think anyone was capable of that.
Going to the cineplex or staying in and streaming this weekend? Every Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m. you can listen to Mike Schulz dish on recent movie releases & talk smack about Hollywood celebs on Planet 93.9 FM with the fabulous Dave & Darren in the Morning team of Dave Levora and Darren Pitra. The morning crew previews upcoming releases, too.
Or you can check the Reader Web site and listen to their latest conversation by the warm glow of your electronic device. Never miss a pithy comment from these three scintillating pundits again.
Thursday, June 13: Discussion of Hit Man, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and The Watchers; previews of Inside Out 2, Tuesday, Treasure, Brats, and The Blue Angels; and tales from Dave's and Darren's aerial adventures at the Quad City Air Show. One of them may have gotten a tad nauseous.
In the familial road-trip dramedy Ezra, Bobby Cannavale plays the leading role of struggling standup comic Max Brandel, and he's mad at everybody. Everybody.
Man’s best friend, barnyard creatures, playful kittens, circus animals, and bucking broncos are among the creatures portrayed in the Muscatine Art Center's exhibition Animals in Art, with paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures from the venue's permanent collection – alongside selections of art pottery on loan from Mark and Marie Latta – on display through June 16.
Representing a survey of the magnificent art and artists within the vast collection of the Do Good Fund, a public charity based in Columbus, Georgia, the traveling exhibition Reckonings & Reconstructions: Southern Photography from The Do Good Fund will be on display at Davenport's Figge Art Museum from June 15 through September 8, its local display also thanks to supporting sponsor The Brian Pasierb Family Foundation, contributing sponsor Carolyn Levine & Leonard Kallio Trust, and media sponsor KLJB FOX 18.
Offering patrons the opportunity to view a series of breathtaking works before the exhibit's closing, the Figge Art Museum's "Last Chance Tour Night" on June 20 will find art lovers meeting in the Figge's Quad City Bank & Trust Grand Lobby for viewings of The Warner Foundation Collection: History in the Painting, an exhibition boasting the talents of revered American artists including Thomas Cole, Severin Roesen, Albert Bierstadt, and John Frederick Kensett.
With their artistic creations elevating “those who have come before” whether in their subject matter, their artform’s technique, or even the way in which they speak about their work, a trio of gifted talents join forces for the latest exhibition at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center, the venue's Brown, Murtha, & Vogel exhibition, on display through June 21, treating patrons to paintings by Julie Brown, quilts by Diane Murtha, and fiber art by Jeane Vogel.
With the eagerly anticipated weekend event hosted by Rock Island's Quad City Arts and taking place for the eighth time, glorious colors and imaginative designs will be gracing the pavement of Rock Island's Schwiebert Riverfront Park in the Quad Cities Chalk Art Fest, a June 22 and 23 summertime fixture boasting free admission, beautiful artistic creations, live music, children's activities, food and drink vendors, and more than $1,800 in cash prizes.
You'll get both the current official narrative challenge and What's Happenin' in the Quad Cities.
(Did you know we publish a new Amy Alkon Advice Goddess, Real Astrology, Red Meat cartoon and RCR Crossword every week?)
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