As the daughter of the late, Grammy Award-winning blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, and herself the winner of six Blues Music Awards, it would be safe to describe 34-year-old vocalist Shemekia Copeland as blues-music royalty. In 2012, during a performance at the Chicago Blues Festival, she even became royalty (of a sort), when Copeland was presented with Koko Taylor's tiara and officially proclaimed "Queen of the Blues" by the City of Chicago.

So when you see the track listings for Copeland's most recent CD - 2012's 33 1/3 - and notice that they include covers of Randy Weeks' country hit "Can't Let Go," Bob Dylan's folk hit "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," and Sam Cooke's R&B hit "Ain't That Good News," you might think the album was designed as the singer's chance to, at least momentarily, escape the blues. Copeland, however, would respectfully disagree.

"I never want to get away from the blues," she says during our recent phone interview promoting her March 28 performance at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center. "That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm a blues singer and proud. Extremely proud. But I just feel that blues is ... . Blues is the root of everything. I mean, what is country but blues with a twang? What is rock 'n' roll but blues with loud guitars?

The Quad City Symphony's March 8 concert featured symphonies from a pair of big names, but the shortest piece on the program - the world premiere of local composer Jacob Bancks' Rock Island Line - stole the show.

The broad, moving lyricism of Brahms' Symphony No. 2 illustrated what the orchestra does well, while Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 revealed the Quad City Symphony's continuing struggle with rhythmic precision.

Yet they were eclipsed by the triumphant debut that opened the concert. Rock Island Line was the highlight of the evening at the Adler Theatre - an energized, complex, and entertaining performance that brought Bancks' vivid piece to life in ways I wasn't expecting.

Photos from the Ballrom Thieves concert at the Redstone Room on March 5, 2014. For more work by Matt Erickson, visit MRE-Photography.com.

The blast of a train whistle has been transformed in the hands of composer Jacob Bancks - a shrill warning becoming the musical core of a composition that he intends as a greeting to his new community.

Using a "whistle chord" as musical glue and localism as an overriding theme, Bancks combined elements of the Mississippi River and the railroad in a way that is artful, rigorous, and sophisticated. But in creating Rock Island Line - which the Quad City Symphony Orchestra will debut on March 8 and 9 - he also incorporated nods to a local jazz legend and a popular song, playful components that help the work breathe and reach out to the audience.

Yet moving from ideas to a finished composition was not a straight line for the Quad Cities-based composer (who turns 32 on February 21). The effort included derailment and dead ends before finding workable inspiration toward an ultimate destination.

In earlier commissioned works, Bancks tried to find musical and non-musical connections to the organization and community for which he was writing. But this time the commissioning agent was the orchestra where he lives, and Bancks was particularly sensitive about the audience and community for whom this premiere would be presented. "These images and how they work with each other are very important to me, because this is my first piece in my new home and new community where I hope to remain," he said in August, in his first interview with the River Cities' Reader. "So, for me, through this piece, I will meet musical people I hope to meet again. And ... this would be a good way to introduce myself to a community I hope to be a part of."