After its 2024 cancellation due to extreme weather, an eagerly awaited wintertime treat and annual celebration of Jack Frost's powers returns to downtown Davenport in Icestravaganza 2025, with this family-friendly event – taking place from January 17 through 19 – boasting favorite monuments carved out of ice and lit up with gloriously colorful LED lights.
Designed to offer the magical chance to see our national symbol in its natural habitat, the third-annual LeClaire Eagle Festival sponsored in part by the Riverboat Twilight will, on January 18 and 19, treat visitors to live eagle demonstrations and educational presentations, as well as opportunities to spot bald eagles in their natural habitat high above the Mississippi River.
Fresh off her critically acclaimed role in Pamela Adlon's 2024 indie comedy Babes, an award-winning standup comedian, actress, television host, producer, and podcast host takes part in the latest virtual Illinois Libraries Present program hosted by the Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries, the January 23 event Love & Laughs with Michelle Buteau finding its subject in honest, hilarious conversation with interviewer Greta Johnsen.
With the in-person event held in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Week, Augustana College graduate, former Moline teacher/coach, and Superintendent of Rock Island-Milan Public Schools Dr. Dave Markward takes part in a talk-show-style conversation about his memoir From Dubuque to Selma & Beyond: My Journey to Understand Racism in America, the January 23 Moline Public Library program finding Markward engaging with fellow Augustana grad and Moline businessman Brett Carter.
Presented as part of the Davenport venue's popular Kaffee und Kuchen series, an in-person and online program on one of the most horrific tragedies in Iowa history - one that took place just over 75 years ago - will take place in The St. Elizabeth Fire, with Bret Grimes, the Bettendorf-based author of The St. Elizabeth Hospital Fire in Iowa, leading the January 26 discussion at the Herman American Heritage Center.
Wondering what to expect from the government in 2025? So far, it looks like it will be more of the same ill-advised, costly, greedy, taxpayer-funded, dunderheaded power grabs, saber-rattling, graft, corruption, and make-works programming that leaves us no better off than where we started.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr testified before the J6 Select Committee (arguably illegitimate because it did not follow the procedural rules for convening a select committee), claiming he had investigated election irregularity and fraud allegations, and determined them to be unfounded. His testimony was one of the video presentations during the J6 Select Committee's nine prime-time investigative hearings.
The Scott County sheriff says although an Iowa Senate committee has rejected his ethics complaint against the state’s new lieutenant governor, he intends to pursue the matter.
Every now and then, you get a story that helps explain the Statehouse power dynamic. The saga of the “intoxicating hemp” regulation bill is one of those stories.
2024 was a tumultuous year for the country (myself included), and it’s a gift to be able to look back at arts and culture highlights I was able to witness, while looking forward to some 2025 events that are sure to be on my calendar.
Hailed by DC Theatre Arts as a "bright, shiny, comic entertainment" that's "full of energy and stamina," the hilarious whodunit Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery makes its area debut at Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse from January 15 through March 8, with five actors playing more than 40 characters in this cheeky Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation.
With its performers the latest guests in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artist Series, the children's-book adaptation Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch enjoys a special January 30 presentation at the Rock Island Public Library's Watts-Midtown Branch, this beautiful, funny, and touching short play with puppets imagined for the stage by Axis Theatre’s artistic director Chris McGregor.
A thrilling adaptation of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes by celebrated Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy serves as the first 2025 production at Iowa City's Riverside Theatre, the show's January 30 through February 9 run treating audiences to what Broad Street Review deemed "a rousing exploration of how our dark impulses threaten to shatter the soul – and how the light of compassion can temper our baser urges."
If the Internet is to be believed – and when isn't it? – the traditional gift for a ninth anniversary is pottery. But while our theatre-reviewing team and yours truly briefly considered getting y'all lovely handcrafted vases or replicas of the ashtray I made in elementary school (ah, more innocent times …), we instead decided to treat you to sincere, exultant, pithy words of praise in announcing recipients of the Ninth-Annual Reader Tony Awards!
Celebrating an iconic band that revolutionized the music scene through hard-hitting hits from the '90s and 2000s, Land of Linkin: Linkin Park Tribute headlines a January 18 concert at Davenport's Redstone Room, reproducing the dual-vocal screams of Chester Bennington and raps of Mike Shinoda revered from such chart-topping albums as Meteora, Minutes to Midnight, and A Thousand Suns.
Their January 19 event boasting works by legendary composers Igor Stravinsky and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Chamber Music Quad Cities continues its 2024-25 season at Davenport's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Parish Hall with Classic Neo-Classic, in which Naumburg International Violin Competition winner Grace Park will join CMQC co-artistic directors Gregory Sauer, on cello, and Thomas Sauer, on piano, for a thrilling exploration of works ranging from the 18th through 20th centuries.
Playing electrifying originals and an exuberant mix of Gulf Coast oldies, traditional Cajun/Creole, and TexMex tunes, the five-piece outfit The Swampland Jewels headlines Polyrhythms' first Third Sunday Jazz Series concert for 2025, their January 19 engagement at Davenport's Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Quad Cities taking jazz lovers on a trip down old Highway 61, across Route 90, through Southwest Louisiana, and into East Texas.
Performing a glorious repertoire of works by Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, Jeremy Bankson, Franklin Ashdown, and Percy Fletcher, University of Dubuque organist and professor of music Dr. Charles Barland will deliver a faculty organ recital of varied works on January 19, the event demonstrating the many varieties of sound and color that are possible on the Heritage Center's magnificent John and Alice Butler Pipe Organ.
Hailed by the Virginia Pilot as being "as close as it gets to the real thing," the funk-rock tribute musicians of Red Not Chili Peppers take the stage at Davenport's Redstone Room on January 23, performing from a Grammy-winning repertoire that includes such top-10 Billboard smashes as "Under the Bridge," "Scar Tissue," and "Dani California."
With nothing but emotional support and well wishes, from here in the Midwest, to the Hollywood community and the many thousands in their vicinity, the boldface names and titles below are my predicted nominees, with non-boldface denoting runners-up and predictions in order of probability.
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, January 16: Previews of The Wolf Man, One of Them Days, and a trio of Oscar possibilities at Iowa City's FilmScene, and discussion on Better Man, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and The Last Showgirl, the latter of which might land Pamela Anderson an Academy Award nomination. Seriously. She'd deserve it, too.
A largely pro forma musical bio-pic on the British pop sensation Robbie Williams, Better Man is only director Michael Gracey's second non-documentary feature, the first being 2017's word-of-mouth hit The Greatest Showman. And about 40 minutes into his new film, you're finally treated to evidence of what a powerfully great showman Gracey can be.
A lauded 2024 documentary sequel that, according to The Guardian, "will make you think twice about what you put in your supermarket basket," directors Robert Kenner's and Melissa Robledo's Food, Inc. 2 serves as the first presentation in 2025 QC Environmental Film Series hosted by River Action, its January 19 screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum treating attendees to what RogerEbert.com's Glenn Kenny deemed "an engaging and watchable activist documentary that does make way for optimism."
Now playing at area theaters.
Featuring paintings both from the museum's collection and on loan, the Figge Art Museum's Marvin Cone: Painter offers a celebration of this exceptional artist and teacher who steadfastly pursued artmaking for more than 50 years, the arresting exhibit, on display from January 18 through June 8, exploring Cone's life as an Iowa artist, the stylistic shifts in his work, and new perspectives on a familiar area talent.
An evocative combination of two art exhibits will be on display in the Joan Mulgrew Gallery of Dubuque's Voices Studio through January 31, with Tim Olson & Lisa Olson inviting guests to experience the unique perspectives of two artists whose journeys are rooted in deep personal reflection, family, and a dedication to their creativity.
Stunning works by an Argentine-American artist and educator revered for his advanced techniques in intaglio printmaking, as well as members of his family, will be celebrated at the University of Dubuque's Bisignano Art Gallery through February 3, with Lasansky: UD's Private Collection honoring the man who established the school of printmaking at the University of Iowa, which offered the first Master of Fine Arts program in the field in the United States.
With its creator's artistic practice belonging to a tradition that intertwines nature, technology, and human experience, Leo Villareal: Interstellar, on display at Davenport's Figge Art Museum through February 23, will showcase nine works from light sculptor Villareal’s Nebula series, inviting patrons into the realms of space, time, and perception through LEDs and custom software.
With each piece chosen by the institutions’ art professors to showcase campus talent and creativity, the Figge Art Museum's 13th installment of the College InvitationaL is on display in the Davenport venue through February 23, artwork from students attending eight area colleges and universities now on view in the museum’s second-floor Katz Gallery.
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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