Two eagerly awaited outdoor events are set to take place in downtown Davenport July 26 and 27, with the 48th Annual Street Fest energizing crowds on Friday and Saturday, and Saturday morning bringing with it the 45th Annual Quad-City Times Bix 7, the challenging summertime foot race that has captivated runners from all over the world.
This feature collects articles published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and by CapitolFax.com and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
Chart-toppers, multi-platinum sellers, multiple-award winners, and more are set to electrify crowds as the grandstand entertainment for the July 30 through August 4 Mississippi Valley Fair, the eagerly awaited six-day festival boasting games, competitions, vendors, and concert sets by more than two dozen national and local acts.
In an era in which video games and cartoons take up a lot of children’s time, Bettendorf's Family Museum is prepared to combat childhood inertia with its new summer exhibition Run! Jump! Fly! Adventures in Action, the interactive exhibit – running June 8 through September 8 – in which children and adults can explore activities such as kung fu, surfing, snowboarding, yoga, and horizontal climbing.
Wildlife, history, geology, and more will be explored when River Action hosts presentations in this year's Channel Cat Talks and Riverine Walks – “Explore the River Series” celebrations of the Quad Cities' unique culture and landscape taking place four times weekly from May 28 through August 31.
"Sterigenics should be completely shut down until we determine it can operate safely," gubernatorial candidate JB Pritzker tweeted last October.
For the second time this year, House Republican Leader Jim Durkin has stripped one of his Party members’ access to a House communications staffer.
One of the points that Governor JB Pritzker has made since Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot began using the news media to ask for a multi-billion-dollar state-pension bailout is that other parts of Illinois are having the same problems as our largest city.
Governor JB Pritzker signed the $45 billion infrastructure bill into law last week during a three-day fly-around to several Illinois cities.
"We are so proud of what we've been able to accomplish this first legislative session of ours," Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton told a TV interviewer earlier this month. "We said that we wanted to think big for the people of Illinois. We said that we wanted to get Springfield back on the track of working families. And that's what we did."
Although it was sweltering outside on Friday night, it was cool and comfortable inside the North Scott High School Fine Arts Auditorium. Nonetheless, a heat wave of talented artists stormed the stage as Countryside Community Theatre and Lancer Productions put on a sizzling opening-night performance of the jukebox musical Mamma Mia!
You know ABBA, right? The 1970s pop group, beloved worldwide, wrote and recorded the catchiest tunes this side of Lennon and McCartney? The Swedish foursome were all over the airwaves, and still are, and their body of work was the springboard that launched the musical Mamma Mia! The Timber Lake Playhouse is running its spectacular production of the show now. Grab a seat before they're gone.
Described by the New York Times as “an astonishingly durable interactive murder mystery” with an “inclusive spirit of fun,” the slapstick comedy Shear Madness makes its eagerly awaited return to Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse July 24 through September 7, the theatre's 2016 presentation of the show inspiring the River Cities' Reader's Jeff Ashcraft to deem it “uproarious, farcical, and fabulous,” as well as “one wild and colorful ride.”
Named “Best Musical of the Year” by Time magazine, Newsweek, and the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the tuneful, tap-dancing entertainment Dames at Sea serves as the season-ending production for the Mississippi Bend Players at Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center, the show's July 26 through August 4 run demonstrating why the New York Times called it “a gem of a musical” and United Press International deemed it “an instant hit.”
One of the most political of ancient-Greek comedies – and, in adapter Don Wooten's hands, one of the most nuttily satisfying – serves as Genesius Guild's traditional season-ending slapstick when the company presents Ecclesiazusae from July 27 through August 4, Aristophanes' one-act farce delivering laughs, commentary, and a madcap, Mack Sennett chase around Rock Island's Lincoln Park stage.
The 34th annual Mississippi Valley Blues Festival was held Friday and Saturday July 5th and 6th at Murphy Park at The Bend in East Moline, Illinois.
With New Noise magazine deeming it “a band that keeps getting better” whose members “seemingly have no problem pushing the boundaries of their unique creativeness,” the Indiana-based musicians of Murder by Death perform as Moeller Nights headliners on July 26, their concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn sure to prove why Americana Highways calls the group's most recent album The Other Shore “indie-rock meets Gothic-Americana at its finest.”
Cited as “Best Songwriter of 2008” by Rolling Stone and lauded as one of the millennium's premier indie-rock and Americana talents, former Bright Eyes musician Conor Oberst takes over Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn stage as a Moeller Nights headliner on July 27, performing from an extensive repertoire that includes 2014's Upside Down Mountain, 2016's Ruminations, and its 2017 companion album Salutations.
Hex Girls bring their brash, combinatory rock-pop jams to Davenport's Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel on July 30.
Music lovers wouldn't necessarily consider the styles an ideal match. But on August 1, Blues Beatles will wow Rhythm City Casino Resort visitors by instilling the songs of John, Paul, George, and Ringo will distinct blues rhythms and phrasing – a blend that had On Stage Magazine raving that the group's Brazilian musicians “seamlessly and successfully melded classic Beatles tunes with deep-down Southern blues. These reinventions of familiar Beatles music lead a listener to wonder what would have happened if the Beatles had signed with Motown through some crazy twist of fate.”
At about the 90-minute mark of director Jon Favreau's two-hour remake of The Lion King, we're finally (finally!) treated to a sequence that's visually rapturous, narratively transfixing, slyly touching and funny, and thematically transcendent all at once – everything that you wish Disney's new CGI behemoth was, and isn't, on a scene-by-scene basis.
Described by The Huffington Post as “a heart-warming tale of human dignity and innovation,” and by the Hollywood Reporter as a work that “transcends the artist-doc format and has a broad emotional appeal,” the Oscar-nominated documentary Waste Land enjoys a special screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum on August 1, serving as a companion event to the venue's current exhibition Vik Muniz: Hand Remade.
If there's any rule-of-thumb regarding high-concept movies, it's that their appeal – and, oftentimes, their plots – can be succinctly described on the fingers of one hand: “violent Nanjiani/Bautista action comedy,” for example, or “killer alligators in a hurricane.” In effect, those respective precis tell you everything you need to know about Michael Dowse's Stuber and Alexandre Aja's Crawl – except, perhaps, that both films are even more entertaining than those grabby five-word descriptions might suggest. Not a lot more, mind you … but entertaining enough, during my recent double-feature, to make me not regret the collective three hours spent in their high-concept company.
Midsommar, the new cinematic freakout by Hereditary writer/director Ari Aster, opens with barely withheld sobs and closes on the image of an ear-to-ear grin – and despite the unsettling, emotionally raw 140 minutes in between, you might find yourself exiting the theater smiling just as hard.
I should probably be knocking wood as I type this. But if my heart ever suddenly stops while you're in the vicinity, don't call for a defibrillator – call for Danny Boyle instead.
The glories of Midwestern landscapes and idyllic farm scenes will be on display at the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy June 29 through July 25, with the Bettendorf venue celebrating the works of a gifted artist and Fairfield, Iowa, resident in the multi-hued, evocative painting exhibition Hans Olson: Big Sky.
From June 28 through August 16, works by a pair of familiar faces from St. Ambrose University's art department will be on display at the Quad City Arts Center, with the Rock Island venue showcasing paintings by the school's gallery director and university curator Christopher Reno, and digital collages by Associate Professor of Art Renee Meyer Ernst.
Glorious colors and evocative images by an artist whom Wired magazine called “a hydroponic Jackson Pollock” will be on display at the Figge Art Museum February 9 through May 12, as the Davenport venue showcases beautifully fluid works by a former NASA engineer turned professional photographer in the new exhibition Submerged in the Sublime: The Landscape Photography of Kim Keever.
With the Los Angeles Times raving that “Strength, physical and spiritual, exudes from her work as if audibly – a proud shout,” the Pittsburgh-based artist Vanessa German finds her latest exhibition Miracles & Glory Abound showcased at the Figge Art Museum May 11 through September 1, the artist's works also housed in permanent collections in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Hartford, Connecticut.
Artists from the Quad City region are, through September 2, transforming the Quad City Arts International Airport Gallery with works incorporating neon and video, along with other lighting effects, in the exhibition Electrified – a fascinating showcase boasting vintage automobile signs on loan from K.V. Dahl of Dahl Ford, as well as an interactive exhibit requiring viewers to climb onto a vintage bicycle and pedal in order to illuminate a display courtesy of Bill Wohlford and Ron Kessel.
You'll get a rundown of What's Happenin' along with your keys to the Quad Cities' culture.
