Boasting performances from Augustana College faculty members, students, and guest artists, the college's Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival will, on February 26, treat music lovers to a day's worth of solo and chamber music in an event exploring new compositions, improvisation, extended performance techniques, micro-tonality, electronic music, multi-media, and other experimental elements.

Described by Glide magazine as “one of the most unflappably earnest musicians on the planet” and by Grammy-winning icon John Mayer as “the best live performer I've ever seen,” rock and Americana singer/songwriter/guitarist Martin Sexton headlines a March 2 concert at Davenport's Redstone Room, demonstrating why Billboard magazine calls him “a star with potential to permanently affect the musical landscape and keep us entertained for years to come.”

With Music Taster's Choice labeling the musician “one of the top 10 guitarists in the world,” the acclaimed blues rocker Anthony Gomes plays Davenport's Redstone Room on February 25 in support of his most recent release Containment Blues, demonstrating the talents that led Blues Music Magazine to rave that the artist's "authentic voice and the formidable guitar chops place him in the forefront of modern blues.”

With his most recent album Change in Me described by Rootstime as “an enticing journey of jazz, blues, and rock” resulting in a “melting pot of sounds,” blues-guitar legend Eddie Turner headlines a special February 27 concert event at Davenport's Gypsy Highway Bar & Grill, with Blues Blast magazine saying that the artist “shines like a diamond” and Guitar Player magazine lauding Turner's “otherworldly, atmospheric guitar style.”

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.

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