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! Less than a year after launching their own musical theater company, Quad-Cities theater veterans (and best buds) Steph DeLacy and Megan Warren are flourishing, as are their students, in 3rd through 12th grades. Double Threat Studios opened their latest musical, “The Addams Family,” Friday night (Oct. 29) at Assumption High School, 1020 W. Central Park Ave., Davenport,... Read More

Like a lot of us, Molly Conrad has learned a lot about light and darkness during the Covid pandemic. The 29-year-old singer/songwriter and Bettendorf native — currently living in Buffalo, N.Y. – has had a pretty productive pandemic, producing a new boy with her husband, and a new album, “Light of the Dark.” One took nine months to make, and the other just three days. “I really love sad songs,” Conrad said recently, noting she’d written the new music over the past couple years. “I love melancholic truth with glimmers of hope sprinkled about, and tried to capture the nuance of... Read More

Three of the buzziest buzzwords nationwide now are diversity, equity and inclusion. Everyone it seems wants to do better in those key areas (be it in their workplace, nonprofit or volunteer organization), and that includes the Quad-Cities theater community. Thanks to a Quad City Arts grant and two professional facilitators, the 73-year-old Quad City Music Guild hosted a 90-minute discussion on these issues Saturday at the Prospect Park theater in Moline – led by the quote: “The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people.” It was attended by about 45 people (fewer than 10 of whom... 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! Music certainly can change lives, but unfortunately it couldn’t save the life of Pierce Cordle. The intelligent, driven, happy 22-year-old guy – who played trumpet since 5th grade – was working a job he loved, in a Peoria hospital emergency room, and was planning to go to med school to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor. But seemingly out of nowhere on Dec. 8, 2016,... Read More

The family, friends, co-workers, teachers and students of Thomas William Hagaman are mourning his sudden, unexpected death at age 26 on Oct. 8. A big-hearted, boisterous musician who touched the lives of so many, Hagaman worked at Griggs Music in Davenport; was choir director at Trinity Lutheran Church in Pleasant Valley, and died on Friday, Oct. 8, 2021 in an accident at his home, where he lived alone. A memorial service to celebrate his life will be held at 1 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 24, at McGinnis-Chambers Funeral Home, 644 River Drive, Bettendorf. The service will be livestreamed by visiting Tom’s... 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! Over two weeks in summer 2019, Alejandro Martinez literally had the whole world in his hands. A Mexican immigrant who made a living as a painter in his home country, he was asked by World Relief Quad Cities director Laura Fontaine to paint a world map mural on one wall of their conference area, at 1852 16th St., Moline, Martinez’s daughter Alejandra – who graduated from... Read More

Juliet Christenson knows how to win friends and influence people, both on the job and off. Director of Product Strategy and Development at Rock Island-based Royal Neighbors of America, she will be honored Wednesday, Oct. 13 as a Woman of Influence by Women Lead Change (WLC) for the 2021 Leadership Awards, as part of the WLC Quad Cities Conference at the Waterfront Convention Center, Bettendorf. The Women of Influence honorees are one of two new categories along with Emerging Leaders. The 2021 award winners are: ATHENA Leadership Award Honoree, sponsored by Bank of America — ** Elaine Kresse,... Read More

The Davenport church for which I play piano had a brief dedication of lovingly handmade quilts Sunday morning that really hit home. The wonderful, open-hearted pastor (Clark Olson-Smith) said these colorful quilts – to be donated around the world – are each so much more than just a piece of material, but are an expression of love. “There is no way for us to imagine the power and effect an act of love can have on a person’s life — how you can use something as small as a quilt to radiate your love from us to the world. May these be used in your service and become blessings for all those... 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! How do you solve a problem like diversity in live theater? From Broadway to the Quad-Cities, theatrical organizations of all kinds are wrestling with this thorny issue, now more than ever. Long before the widespread racial reckoning that’s taken place nationwide in the past 17 months (post-George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Black Lives Matter, which has only intensified),... Read More

Marry me a little, Love me just enough. Cry, but not too often, Play, but not too rough. Keep a tender distance so we’ll both be free. That’s the way it ought to be. I’m ready! Stephen Sondheim, “Marry Me a Little,” originally cut from “Company” (1970) Robert — an eternal bachelor and the sun around which the frantic, neurotic planets orbit in the landmark musical “Company” — specialized in social distancing long before it was fashionable (and recommended). For its first musical in 26 months, the great “Company” is coming to the Black Box Theatre,... Read More