Appearing in an area-wide series of full concerts, pop-up events, and a special performance opposite his father between February 22 and 26, acclaimed pianist Barron Ryan serves as the latest guest in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artists Series, this up-and-coming musical sensation recognized as one of Smithsonian magazine's “Ten Innovators to Watch in 2021.”

Performing an organic mix of pop rock, progressive rock, Latin pop, reggae, ska, and calypso, a quartet of gifted musicians pays homage to one of the best-selling and most successful Latin-American bands of all time when Revolución de Amor, on February 18, pays an evening-long tribute to Maná in a special touring concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center.

Continuing the Redstone Room's concert-event programming under the "All Sweat Original Series" banner, in which local songwriters are paired up alongside outstanding area musicians to act as their own personal backing band, the Davenport venue will host three marvelous headliners in its February 17 presentation: Charlotte Blu, Alexa Mueller, and J. Wolfskill.

Composed of the stirring string musicians and vocalists Ranaan Meyer on double bass and Nicholas Kendall and Charles Yang both on violin, the critically lauded trio Time for Three plays a special February 17 concert at the Bettendorf Performing Arts Center as guests in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artist Series, the performers' eclectic tastes and talents inspiring their self-professed moniker as “a classically trained garage band.”

Touring in support of 2021's Texas to Tennessee that Album of the Year called “a fun, lighthearted, and breezy country-pop project from one of neotraditional country's most underrated '90s artists,” the chart-topping Texan Clay Walker plays Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on February 19, the artist having debuted six chart-topping hits and a dozen acclaimed studio albums over a career of nearly three decades.

The first couple months of the new year have historically been a relative dead zone for new music releases, as the industry resets and gears up for another calendar year with the bigger labels planning major drops typically dotted throughout the spring and summer.

Performing from the repertoire of the world's most gifted and acclaimed musicians of all time, the Duke Ellington Orchestra takes the stage at the University of Dubuque's Heritage Center on February 11, paying tribute to this pivotal figure in jazz who, in the opinion of composers and historians Gunther Schuller and Barry Kernfeld, is widely considered "the most significant composer of the genre.”

Designed to provide hope and celebration for those with cancer and all who love them, the Living Proof Exhibit's and Quad City Symphony Orchestra's opera Karkinos will enjoy a special presentation at Moline's Barlett Performing Arts Center on February 12, with the ensemble's musicians and conductor Mark Russell Smith treating guests to a dazzling new work by Jacob Bancks, whose compositions have been praised by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "frisky, colorful, voluble, and written in a direct musical style."

Best known as the founder and lead vocalist/guitarist for the alternative-country and Americana ensemble American Aquarium, singer/songwriter BJ Barham plays a special solo set at Davenport's Raccoon Motel on February 12, the artist's 2016 album Rockingham lauded by No Depression for its artist's “ability to capture depth and emotion that is on par with few others.”

With ther special concert presentation hosted by local favorites The Dawn and featuring performances by an additional five area ensembles, the Summer Camp: On the Road Tour stops at Davenport's Redstone Room on February 10, with the scheduled musicians competing for a spot on the annual music festival's 2022 lineup, and audience votes doubling as entries for pries, swag, and tickets to the three-day event.

Pages