It’s Bix Fest weekend! The annual jazz fest is taking place this weekend at Rhythm City Casino in Davenport and you can find details here. There’s a stellar lineup of national jazz bands to dazzle & delight. It’s a 3-day party you won’t want to miss! ‘23 Bands: Andy Schumm’s Chicago Cellar Boys Banu Gibson Dan Levinson & the Roof Garden Jass Band Hal Smith’s New Orleans Night Owls Josh Duffee’s Graystone Monarchs TJ Muller & the Arcadia Dance Orchestra Jeff Barnhart Bix Youth Jazz Band  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 bassist Dan Martin moved with his wife in 2007 to a quiet Queens neighborhood in New York City, he knew next to nothing about legendary jazz cornetist, pianist and composer Bix Beiderbecke. Martin – now 52, with a 12-year-old son — moved within eight blocks of the Sunnyside apartment building where the Davenport native died of pneumonia Aug. 6, 1931, at just 28,... Read More

More than 20 downtown Davenport businesses have come together to present Bix Block Parties on Friday, July 23, and Saturday, July 24, during Bix 7 race weekend. Supported by the Downtown Davenport Partnership (DDP), the event is designed to celebrate the downtown neighborhood with multiple blocks of events programmed by adjacent business owners throughout downtown. The locally focused block parties event replaces the traditional Street Fest that featured traveling vendors on Second Street. “After years of successful placemaking efforts, downtown has reached a point where DDP no longer needs... Read More

The Chicago Cellar Boys will be performing at The Knoxville Tap in Milan, IL, on Sunday, August 8th 2021 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm. This performance will be the final Bix Jazz Festival related event for the weekend, and it’s always an amazing time! Event organizer Josh Duffee will be taking reservations for advanced seating from now until the day of the event, and can be reached on cell phone or through e-mail – jgoldkette@msn.com – for reservations. The cost will be $20 for Advanced Reserved Seating + Meal, or $15 At The Door + Meal. Reserved seating is first-come, first serve,... Read More

Local musician Josh Duffee has long been an advocate for keeping the legacy of legendary jazz musician — and former Quad-Cities resident — Bix Beiderbecke alive and well. Now Duffee is advocating to keep Bix’s childhood home alive as well. Duffee has been monitoring the situation as Bix’s former abode has fallen into a state of disrepair year after year, and now he’s taking action to preserve it. Duffee posted on his Facebook page today, “I made a call to the City of Davenport yesterday on Bix’s birthday after I was home from visiting the house and grave... Read More

And on into the summer… We’re looking back at the year that was in arts and entertainment, 2020. Every day between now and New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, we’ll be posting a story painting the big picture on the year, a couple months each day. We hope you enjoy the look back, and let’s all hope for a happy new year and a much, much, much, much better 2021! Here’s the latest installment, part five, months July and August. Iowa and Illinois were both opened up to the public in a limited capacity, and many venues opened to the public — some with social distancing restrictions,... Read More

Ten years ago, when Davenport jazz drummer Josh Duffee first performed with jazz singer Cecile McLorin Salvant in England, he knew he was in the presence of some kind of genius. This week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation agreed, awarding the 31-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y. one of its 21 “genius grants.” The foundation – which “supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world” — each year hands out the MacArthur Fellowship, a $625,000, no-strings-attached grant for individuals who have shown... Read More

Fourteen years before Aug. 6 was burned into the world’s memory (with the 1945 U.S. atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 70,000 people), that date marked another impactful death. Davenport native and jazz legend Leon Bismark (“Bix”) Beiderbecke died Aug. 6, 1931 at age 28, from alcohol abuse and lobar pneumonia in his Queens, N.Y., apartment. His mother and brother Burnie were on their way to New York but arrived too late. Bix’s body was returned to Davenport with services on Aug. 11, 1931 at Hill & Frederick’s Funeral Home, and burial at Oakdale Cemetery,... Read More

Several Quad-Cities cultural organizations and projects were among 176 grants totaling just over $2 million, announced Friday by the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs (IDCA), for works in art, film, history, and culture. The funding comes through programs overseen by the department’s divisions: the Iowa Arts Council, the State Historical Society of Iowa and Produce Iowa, the state office of film and media production. “These funds are critical to help sustain arts, film, heritage and cultural vibrancy across the state and showcase Iowa’s world-class cultural programs and destinations with... Read More

Joining the cavalcade of Quad-Cities cultural offerings impacted by Covid-19, the 49th-annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport also is moving online this year, July 31 and Aug. 1. It had been scheduled for the Rhythm City Casino Event Center in Davenport, but bands this time will record videos that can be seen for free, said Steve Trainor, Bix Society board president. “I think the majority of the board of directors of the Bix Jazz Society had felt, almost from the beginning that this was not going to be your typical year,” he said Monday. “And like everyone else, the more... Read More