Local and national writing talents will combine their literary gifts for one special night at Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on July 18, with the evening's SPECTRA readings – co-presented by the Midwest Writing Center – treating attendees to spoken-word performances by emerging area authors as well as critically acclaimed poets Adam Fell, MC Hyland, Christine Kanownik, and Becca Klaver.
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.
Five days of outdoor fun will be on hand when East Moline's Rock Island Country Fairgrounds hosts the annual Rock Island County Fair July 16 through 20, offering patrons mornings, afternoons, and evenings filled with carnival rides, games, food vendors, animal shows, racing tournaments, and exciting events scheduled for the nights' grandstand entertainment.
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.
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."
As U.S. Constitutional scholar and George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley wrote in May, the U.S. Attorney General is completely wrong in his efforts to prosecute Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange under the Espionage Act. "The use of the Espionage Act strikes at the heart of the First Amendment," wrote Turley, who noted with approval that several prosecutors in the Attorney General's office shared his view that the indictment of Assange on espionage charges is a terrible idea.
Nominated for five 2001 Tony Awards and currently the ninth-longest-running Broadway musical of all time, the internationally beloved Mamma Mia! enjoys a Countryside Community Theatre and Lancer Productions staging at Eldridge's North Scott High School July 19 through 28, the show's collection of timeless tunes from the Swedish pop group ABBA leading the New York Post to call the experience “one of those nights when you sit back and let a nutty kind of joy just sweep over you.”
It's magical to enter the theatre at Prospect Park and take in the huge, overarching proscenium studded with large round bulbs and that dark-red velvety curtain. Before Thursday's preview performance, I took a deep, happy breath as I absorbed this classic-American-theatre ambiance and anticipated a dazzling musical spectacle – and Quad City Music Guild gave me what I wanted.
Sure, it’s cliché. But of all the Shakespeare tragedies, Hamlet is my favorite, so I was excited to take in director Alaina Pascarella’s version in Lincoln Park on Saturday night. And Genesius Guild took this classic, trimmed it down, and kept it enjoyable for enthusiastic William Shakespeare fans and newcomers both.
I won't be coy: The Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Something Intangible, by Bruce Graham, is an imagining of the relationship between brothers Walt and Roy Disney, but with the names changed. They co-founded the Disney Bros. Studios, with Walt the visionary and Roy the money man.
Whenever I visit Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, I'm reminded of how wholesome, welcoming, and beautiful this location in the Midwest is, and how this unique venue is truly a lovely place to take in a show. The players’ latest production, author Jack Sharkey's Missing Link, is a marital comedy full of all kinds of twists and turns, mistaken identities, and romantic conundrums, and it gives patrons a lighthearted look at the things we do for love.
Lauded by Paste magazine for their “emotional urgency” and by the Chicago Tribune for “the sheer force of the trio's aching, tight-knit harmonies,” the Americana and alt-country musicians of The Lone Bellow perform a July 18 Moeller Nights concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, demonstrating why NPR raved about “the group's earnest, ingratiating charm, dispensed via charisma-drenched songs that amble and soar.”
Performing from a repertoire that includes such classics as “Uncle John's Band,” “Truckin,” “Alabama Getaway,” and the chart-topping “Touch of Grey,” the rockers of The Schwag return to the Rock Island Brewing Company on July 19, appearing locally in their 28th year as professional Grateful Dead tribute artists.
An early pioneer of the 1960s' British Invasion and a bona-fide rock-and-roll legend plays Davenport's Redstone Room on July 20, with the venue hosting the area arrival of singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Denny Laine, the 74-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who co-founded The Moody Blues and the Paul McCartney-led outfit Wings.
On July 21, a quartet of gifted musicians serve as the latest guests in Polyrhythms' Third Sunday Jazz Workshop and Matinée Series, with Davenport's Redstone Room hosting an evening of jazz originals and standards with the 3 Dawgs & a Bone ensemble of Scott Barnum on bass, Jim Dreier on drums, Steve Grismore on guitar, and Rich Medd on bone – trombone, that is.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
The Reader's Mike Schulz and OurQuadCities.com's Ashe Simpson d
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.
