Nathan Weinbender

On the Beastie Boys’ 1986 track “Time to Get Ill,” rapper Mike D brags about his drinking abilities: “I can drink a quart of monkey and still stand still.” If you only half-listen, it sounds like he could be saying “quarter monkey.” For the Spokane rock trio Quarter Monkey, the meaning of their name has had different interpretations over the years, but the kind-of Beastie Boys reference is their go-to explanation.

Hit the “seek” button on your car radio and you’re likely to come across the usual stuff – Top 40 hits, a selection of classic rock staples, perhaps some political or cultural discourse courtesy of NPR. But if it stops on either 92.3 or 88.1 FM, the dual frequencies of Spokane’s Thin Air Community Radio (KYRS), you’re going to hear something different.

“Second Samuel,” Pamela Parker’s bittersweet comedy running at Spokane’s Civic Theatre, is a two-act play. This is an important distinction, because each half of the story shows a small Georgia town in a different state of transformation. Change isn’t something the residents of the tight-knit community Second Samuel openly embrace. In fact, it’s one of those places where everything is as it’s always been, and that’s just fine with everyone.

Pretty much every phase of the Lion Oh My’s career has been made up on the fly. When the Spokane rock four-piece played its first show, they only had four or five songs written and were practicing in an abandoned, windowless church that they rented for about $200 a month and kept warm with a small kerosene heater.

Dawn and Mateusz Wolski bring a new meaning to the word “harmony.” She’s an internationally renowned soprano opera singer, he’s a Polish violinist who’s been the concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony since 2007, and they’ve been married for 10 years. They both caught the musical bug at an early age.

Dawn and Mateusz Wolski bring a new meaning to the word “harmony.” She’s an internationally renowned soprano opera singer, he’s a Polish violinist who’s been the concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony since 2007, and they’ve been married for 10 years. They both caught the musical bug at an early age.

Tracey Vaughan first experienced “The Diary of Anne Frank” in 1993, playing the title role in North Idaho College’s production of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s play. Twenty years later, she has returned to the show, except this time she’s on the other side of the stage, directing NIC’s revival of the renowned historical drama. By now, everyone is aware of the plight of Anne Frank – that she was a Jewish girl living in Amsterdam during WWII, that she and her family evaded Nazi capture and lived in hiding for two years before they were found and sent to concentration camps. Frank’s diary has become compulsory reading since its first publication in 1947, and Goodrich and Hackett’s stage adaptation, which is set entirely within the Frank family’s secret annex, deals with both the specific horrors of the Jewish persecution and the universal pangs of adolescence.

When you think of the symphony, what names pop into your mind? Mozart, maybe, or Bach? But what about the Bee Gees, Journey, or Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons? This Saturday, three former “American Idol” contestants will be performing pop, rock and jazz classics while accompanied by the Spokane Symphony and conductor Morihiko Nakahara in a program called “Symphony Idol,” meant to challenge your perceptions of an orchestra’s limitations.