The public libraries in Cedar Rapids, Marion, and Hiawatha present bestselling authors in a free reading and signing event each year in the “Out Loud” author series. June 16, it’s poet and Newbury Award-winner Kwame Alexander. June 23, Debbie Macomber, whose books have spent 990 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists. Admission is …
Category: News
Culture Crawl 261 “Puffy Sleeves Bigger Than Human Heads”
The University of Iowa Theatre program presents Oscar Wilde’s classic farce, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” June 15-25. A comedy set against the backdrop of the rigid social structures of Nineteenth Century Britain, the play is both social commentary but also set up many of the comedic rules and structures that we see in plays, …
Special Programs: Week of June 12 – 18
Short List with Bob Naujoks Monday – Friday at 8:35 AM and Saturday at 7 AM Short List: Jazz Women – The Instrumentalists (Jennifer Leitham) Jennifer Leitham is an outstanding bassist and has played with a host of top names in jazz: George Shearing, Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Watrous and Benny Carter. …
Culture Crawl 263 “Say His Name!”
Riverside Theatre Summer in Lower City Park opens June 9, with two plays. “Macbeth,” the well-known Shakespearean tragedy (which theatre folk do not refer to by title, because it’s supposed to be bad luck), is the first of two plays being staged. The setting and costumes for the show are inspired by World War I, …
Culture Crawl 262 “We Can Ask The Composer, Because He’s Alive!”
Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre performs “Speed Dating Tonight!” a new comic opera. Composed by Michael Ching, who coincidentally recently moved to Ames, Iowa, it’s a series of vignettes set against the backdrop of… you guessed it, speed dating. Stage director Marina Bergenstock says Ching also worked with the production on some changes that make this …
Special Programs: Week of June 5 – 11
Short List with Bob Naujoks Monday – Friday at 8:35 AM and Saturday at 7 AM Short List: Jazz Women – The Instrumentalists (Clora Bryant) Clora Bryant is a long-lived, but obscure Los Angeles female trumpet player. Clora Bryant was born in Denton, Texas, Attended Prairie View College where she was an outstanding …
Culture Crawl 260 “A Play That’s Also a Rock Concert”
“Million Dollar Quartet” is the story of a December night at Sun Studios in Memphis, when the legendary Sam Phillips and his proteges Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins gathered for a night of music, laughter and tears, before the four musicians became the legends we know them as today. The …
Culture Crawl 259 “3 Centuries, 28 Years, 3 Months”
Tim Hankewich has waited his entire career to conduct Bach’s B Minor Mass, and when it was added to the 2016-2017 Orchestra Iowa season, he spent nearly the entirety of the summer of 2016 studying every note of the score to get it just right. Chorale Midwest joins Orchestra Iowa for “Epic Bach” June 3 …