Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! If you think the last two years have been crazy (thanks, Covid), the fine folks at WQPT-TV in Moline have endured an unusual past three years – simultaneously a thrilling joyride and a white-knuckled journey of adventure and challenge. The Quad Cities’ PBS station, which will mark 40 years in business in 2023, got a new general manager last month – who’s actually a... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! If it’s the dream of most artists to make their mark on society and leave a legacy for future generations, 28-year-old Atlanta Dawn Fulscher of Rapids City has already done that many, many times over. And Dawn (who goes by her atmospheric middle name) has accomplished this – in a spectacular, prolific and blazingly colorful fashion – pretty much in just the past two... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! Twenty-twenty-one was the year we were all supposed to get back to normal, wasn’t it? After the punishing isolation and shutdowns of 2020, the life-saving promise of Covid vaccines and a new president who actually seemed to care about the health and sanity of Americans, we were ready to turn that corner in 2021, starting with a touted “hot vaxxed summer.” Well, that... Read More

When my wife Betsy and I were married in July 1990, in a Quaker meeting house in Evanston, Ill., we included two Catholic priests in the service (in honor of my upbringing), but we “married” ourselves, under the care of the meeting, not repeating vows from a benevolent clergyman. During plans for our interfaith ceremony, I originally wanted the music to the immortal “One Hand, One Heart” played during our vows, joining our different faith traditions, but for some reason I backed out. The quiet, reverent Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim song (from 1957’s “West Side Story”) is one... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! When James Lambrecht came to teach music at Augustana College, Rock Island, nearly 34 years ago, Bergendoff Hall of Fine Arts was already in need of a makeover. The building (which dates from 1955 and includes the 1,500-seat Centennial Hall) is finally getting one. Bergendoff, at 3701 7th Ave., Rock Island – named for Conrad Bergendoff, the college’s fifth president —... Read More

The new Christmas-themed musical at Mockingbird on Main in downtown Davenport is the ultimate stocking stuffer – not a major present in any way, but a sweet, silly, delicious trifle in more ways than one. When a huge snowstorm hits and the star-studded cast of a 1953 radio show can’t make it into the studio, those who are trapped inside the studio — the janitor, the writer, the assistant station manager and the young frazzled producer — must take over and see that show does indeed go on. Performed without intermission (running less than an hour), “Deck the Halls” is a frantic, fast-paced,... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! The next two Sundays will be special for longtime friends Shellie Moore Guy of Rock Island and Nate Lawrence of East Moline. Tomorrow, Dec. 12, Guy — a well-known local storyteller, poet and author – will make her second appearance with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra in as many months, in a 3 p.m. Holiday Brass concert in Davenport. On Sunday, Dec. 19, the Polyrhythms’... Read More

“The Sound of Music” may seem like an overdone, ancient warhorse – with its 1938 Austrian setting and ruthless, invading Nazis – but classics are classics for a reason. Live theater presents the chance for actors to interpret iconic roles in their own way, putting their own spin on them, letting us see the familiar stories with fresh eyes, and absorb the messages and emotions in ways the original creators and performers could not have anticipated. The intolerance and hate speech reflected by the Third Reich in “Sound of Music” (which premiered in 1959) take on whole new meanings in... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! God is dead. Well, maybe not THAT God, but did anyone ever see Stephen Sondheim and God in the same room? And now, He is gone – the legendary Broadway composer and lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021 (fittingly on Black Friday) at age 91 – but will never be forgotten, since we have the sacred texts. In recent years, especially since the 2016 death of my mother, I have had grave... Read More

If you close your eyes during the terrific, open-hearted, snarky musical “Holiday Inn,” now at Music Guild in Moline, there is virtually no way to tell that the incredibly talented, dedicated volunteer performers are singing with cloth masks on. (Precise diction helps and those must be powerful body mics, thank God.) As we approach our third year of the interminable Covid pandemic, the Prospect Park theater is continuing to abide by the strict Illinois regulations that require everyone above age 2 to wear face masks while in indoor public places. That makes theater-going more safe and secure... Read More