Nathan Weinbender

It’s been six years since Pete Yorn released a solo album, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t remained busy. The singer-songwriter, who’s scheduled to play to a sold-out crowd at the Bartlett on Sunday, hasn’t put a stop to touring, and his side project the Olms dropped a record in 2013.

“Next to Normal” is a tale of familial dysfunction, and it tackles such complex themes as drug addiction, death, betrayal and mental illness. But this isn’t a stuffy, tear-jerking melodrama: It’s an irreverent rock musical. The acclaimed show hits the Bing’s stage on Thursday night, a collaboration between the Modern Theater and Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre.

Eckart Preu is almost always behind a podium and in front of the orchestra during the Spokane Symphony’s Classics concerts. But this weekend, the conductor will be briefly putting down his baton and joining the ranks of his musicians. During a performance of J.S. Bach piece Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, Preu, an accomplished pianist, will be playing along on the harpsichord.

Three years ago, G-Eazy was flying just beneath the radar. He’d developed an underground following, drumming up recognition on YouTube and releasing two buzzed-about albums on an indie label. A 2014 profile in Rolling Stone wondered, “Is the spotlight not far behind?” Now the 26-year-old is signed to RCA and has had two LPs show up on the Billboard charts. It’s been a gradual climb from cult success to mainstream recognition for the California-based rapper, whose spring tour hits the Spokane Arena on April 7.

Joanna Newsom creates small, bustling universes within her songs, which take on the form of fairy tales, medieval allegories or meditations on war, time and mortality. It’s tempting, then, to treat them like works of fiction, to follow along with a lyrics sheet in order to keep up with the fables she’s relaying. But the singer, songwriter and harpist, who performs at the Bing Crosby Theater next week, says she’s more concerned with mood, tone and atmosphere than the actual lyrical content.

The last time guitarist Warren Haynes came through Spokane in 2014, he was performing with his revered, long-running band Gov’t Mule. Now he’s returning to the Bing Crosby Theater on a solo tour, but Haynes’ upcoming show isn’t going to be the kind of quiet, reserved acoustic set you might be expecting.

Tom Stoppard’s “Hapgood,” which opens at Spokane Civic Theatre this weekend, is a puzzle box that may not have a key, a tricky, sometimes opaque morality play about duality, identity, paranoia and uncertainty. It’s most easily described as a Cold War thriller, but it’s also a somber character study and a dry comedy of manners, and its plot relies heavily on the ins and outs of quantum physics. Consider it a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Spokane Comedy Club is a family affair, run by Adam Norwest and co-owned by his parents, Kevin and Renee Fandt, who opened a successful comedy club in Tacoma in 2010.

Sarah Colonna, a veteran of “Chelsea Lately” and “Last Comic Standing” has found success as a storytelling comedian and author. She is the first guest of the new Spokane Comedy Club in downtown.

This weekend’s Symphony SuperPops concert, conducted by Jorge Luis Utzcátegui, features singer Patti Austin performing Ella Fitzgerald’s greatest hits.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost” isn’t one of William Shakespeare’s more frequently performed works. Not only is it notoriously difficult, featuring a scene that most scholars consider the longest in the Bard’s canon, but it’s full of topical references that won’t make much sense to contemporary viewers. But a recent musical adaptation of the comedy has transported the story into the 21st century and makes the story accessible to modern audiences. Eastern Washington University’s theater department opened this updated version of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” last weekend, and the production continues through Saturday.

On a Wednesday afternoon at Holmes Elementary School, the all-purpose room off the main entrance is filled with the sounds of musical scales and warm-ups. It’s the weekly rehearsal for Music Innovates, a new after-school program for band and strings students, and the kids are sitting in green plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle around conductor Jorge Luis Uzcátegui. He lifts his baton, and the cacophony immediately subsides.

On Friday, the Spokane Symphony, under the direction of Morihiko Nakahara, will present a special program consisting entirely of John Williams’ famous “Star Wars” compositions.

“Maybe Baby” started life as a one-act, two-person play, went through an extensive workshop process in staged readings and now hits the Modern Theater Coeur d’Alene’s stage as a fully formed production. Written by Matt Harget and directed by Hannah Paton, the show is a labor of love about the challenges of labor.

With the Oscar ceremony airing tonight, Dan Webster and Nathan Weinbender give you a rundown of the six major Oscar categories, selecting which films and performances they think are destined to take home Oscar gold and whom they’d vote for if we had a ballot. Some of these predictions are sure things; others are more of a mystery.

Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” was originally published in two volumes in the late 1860s, and not only was it an instant commercial success, but it represented a sea change in how female characters were portrayed in literature. The musical adaptation of Alcott’s best-known work, which opened on Broadway in 2005, premieres at the Spokane Civic Theatre this weekend. The production is being directed by Kathie Doyle-Lipe, who has previously directed and choreographed some elaborate musicals for the theater (“Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Crazy for You,” “Oklahoma”). But “Little Women” is a more intimate show than she’s used to, following a simple story and requiring a cast of 10.

In the world of the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, jazz and swing never went out of style, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley never picked up an instrument, and rock ’n’ roll is still dominated by upright basses and brass sections. The Oregon-based band, which performs Saturday as part of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, was at the forefront of a swing and big band revival in the late ’90s, and its single “Zoot Suit Riot” was a surprise radio hit.

Originally from Yugoslavia and currently based in France, Maja Bogdanovic is a world-renowned cellist who will be performing with the Spokane Symphony this weekend. Bogdanovic will be featured on Cello Concerto in E Minor by English composer Edward Elgar, a piece that she says carries an emotional significance. We spoke to Bogdanovic via email from her home in Paris, touching on everything from her approach to music, her youth in war-torn Yugoslavia and the importance of music education.

When the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival first kicked off in 1967, it was an intimate, single-day event featuring a handful of artists. As it nears its 50th year, the festival stretches over several days, and it has drawn such nationally recognized artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Bobby McFerrin.

The influential Christian rock group Newsboys began in 1985 in Australia, the songwriting project of musicians Peter Furler and George Perdikis. And while the two founders have long since departed, Newsboys soldier on. The band’s lineup has changed several times over the years, but three of its current quartet have been playing together since the ’90s.

Carl Maxey’s story contains enough material to fill several biographies. It’s impossible to condense his life down to just one accomplishment. He was a medic in the military, a champion boxer, a civil rights pioneer and an advocate for the underprivileged and disenfranchised. He was also Spokane’s first practicing black attorney, he ran for Senate and was nominated for the Supreme Court, and he fought racism and discrimination in Spokane when nobody else was.