In their powerful tribute to American spirit and local legacy, the Knox-Galesburg Symphony will open their 2025-26 season with a powerful performance of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait at Galesburg's Orpheum Theatre, the September 27 concert event presented under the direction of Richard Cangro, and featuring actor Steven Duchrow portraying Carl Sandburg as narrator – a nod to Sandburg’s Grammy-winning 1960 performance.

Fifty-one years after his passing, the music of the man who introduced the world to "Take the A-Train," "Caravan," "Sophisticated Lady," "Satin Doll," and other classics will be performed by the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts Big Band in An Evening of Duke Ellington: Sentimental Mood. a September 26 evening boasting vocalists Mary Denmead, Katelyn Halverson, and Steven Jepson, and presented by Josh Sazon and Wes Habley as part of the American Songbook series.

With the touring ensemble boasting the talents of keyboardist Vic White, lead guitarist Steve Sheroan, bassist Trenton "Poptart" Shuler, drummer Criss Cheatham, and lead vocalist Bryan Cole, Resurrection: A Journey Tribute lands at Galesburg's Orpheum Theatre on October 2, the rockers delivering a celebration of the band's legacy sure to feature such Billboard smashes as “Separate Ways,” “Wheel In the Sky," "Lights," and many more.

Composed of veteran Chicago musicians Melissa Brausch, Josh Chicoine, Mike Holtz, Dan Ingenthron, Mike Vanier, and Lindsay Weinberg, the touring artists of Second Hand News: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac land at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse on September 27, treating fans to such timeless hit singles as "Dreams," "Go Your Own Way," "Rhiannon," "Edge of Seventeen," "Landslide," and "Gypsy."

Lauded by The Guardian as "mercilessly catchy and meticulously camp," the Chicago-based garage-rock/pop trio of Dehd headlines a September 17 concert event at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox, their 2024 album Poetry inspiring Pitchfork to rave, "With more ambitious melodies, bolder harmonies, and compositional complexity, the Chicago trio’s new album hypercharges their already electric sound."

With award-winning, Billboard-charting, internationally touring artists performing on the banks of a mighty river, the Mississippi Valley Blues Fest returns to Davenport for its 38th incarnation on September 15 and 16, the LeClaire Park event – hosted by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society – featuring seven thrilling Main Stage concert sets, eight additionally incendiary sets on the neighboring Pedigo-Jones Stage, and music lovers ages 16 and under admitted free with a paid adult.

Lauded by the Los Angeles Times for his “commanding presence” and “a voice that can yearn with crystalline purity or howl with guttural anguish,” Nathaniel Rateliff and his band the Night Sweats bring their national "South of Here Tour" to Moline's Vibrant Arena at the MARK on September 19, this 2024 album of the tour's title leading AllMusic to rave that "Rateliff leads his crew through a panoply of '70s-touched roots rock, delivered with warmth, sincerity, and occasional bursts of grit."

Paying tribute to the soft-rock pioneers who were number-one sensations on Billboard's Adult Contemporary, the touring musicians of TOAST: The Ultimate Bread Experience bring their tour to Davenport's Adler Theatre on September 25, performing from a repertoire that includes such smashes as "Baby I'm-a Want You," "Everything I Own," "If," and the chart-topping "Make It with You."

Touring in support of their 2025 album debut Afterglow that Bring the Noise UK called a "seamless blend of clean and screamed vocals, backed by guitar riffs that switch between groovy and crushing," the alternative-metal rockers of Sleep Theory headline the I-ROCK 93.5 Sixth-Anniversary Show at East Moline venue The Rust Belt, the September 19 headliners also praised by Dead Rhetoric for delivering a "fluid powerhouse of metallic urgency, R&B playfulness, danceable electronics, and modern rock energy."

Led by rock legend Buzz Osborne, who has been touring with his band for 42 years, and boasting the sterling musicianship of drummer Dale Grover, bassist Steven Shane McDonald, and drummer Coady Willis, the sludge-metal and hardcore-punk musicians of Melvins return to Davenport's Raccoon Motel on September 19 in support of their April release Thunderball, an album that, according to AllMusic, "confirms they haven't finished challenging themselves or their audience, not by a long shot."

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