Northern Illinois Community Calendar

Free live music event to raise funds for Toys for Tots of Ogle County. Acoustic musicians starting at 3 p.m. with bands in the evening.

Admission is free but cash donations and donations of new toys in their original packaging are encouraged.

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Chad Goodman, brings its treasured Holiday Spectacular concerts to the Hemmens Cultural Center on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 13, 2026, at 2:30 p.m.

Special guests include the Elgin Master Chorale, Integrity School of Dance, and Santa himself, as the ESO performs holiday favorites.

Arcomusical is thrilled to return to the library for another year to present their ever-growing collection of holiday arrangements for berimbau chamber ensemble!

Arcomusical’s music is fresh, playful, rhythmic, colorful, and soulful. The ensemble's level of concentration, communication, and joy of chamber music performance is palpable.

Playing exclusively on the Afro-Brazilian instrument called the berimbau, Arcomusical's performances provide a unique and family-friendly experience. After the performance, children of all ages (from 2 to 92!) are invited to hold and perform on the group’s unique instruments. Arcomusical delights in spending time with audience members to give anyone who wishes a chance to play our unique instruments for themselves.

This concert is free and open to all. No registration is required. This event is part of the after-hours concert series in partnership with the Friends of the Library and 94.9 WDKB.

This event will also feature free samples of chocolate chess pie and eggnog chess pie from the Treehouse Pie Company in Sycamore.

For additional information, please contact Samantha at samanthah@dkpl.org or at (815) 756-9568 ext. 1701.

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Chad Goodman, brings its treasured Holiday Spectacular concerts to the Hemmens Cultural Center on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 13, 2026, at 2:30 p.m.

Special guests include the Elgin Master Chorale, Integrity School of Dance, and Santa himself, as the ESO performs holiday favorites.

Join Gold Record, Grammy Nominated, 47 album recording artist Dave Rudolf as he parodies traditional seasonal holiday tunes. Featuring Hilarious Christmas parodies from Daves' Christmas CDs played nationwide and on Dr. Demento. Tunes such as “Oh Come Oh Come, I Read the Manual”, “The Little Dumber Boy”, and “Do You Fear What I Fear.”

Dave has shared the stage with The Beach Boys, The Everly Brothers, The Mamma and Pappas, Steve Goodman, John Hartford, The Smothers Brothers, Michael Smith, Megon McDonough, The Gatlin Brothers, Sha Na Na, and Cheech and Chong, to name a few.

This program is intended for adults. We’ll raffle off a couple of Dave’s CDs during the concert. No registration is required.

For additional information, please contact Susan at susang@dkpl.org or at (815) 756-9568 ext. 2114.

Soprano Jordan Knapick is an operatic and musical theater singer, dancer, and actress based in Seattle. A Northern Illinois native, Jordan caught the theater bug at age eleven in a local youth theater production of Annie.

Since then, she has sung Almirena in Handel’s Rinaldo, the soprano role in Fauré’s Requiem, and Mabel in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Elsa Schraeder in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. As Juliette in Lehár’s The Count of Luxembourg, Jordan’s voice “radiated sunlight, graceful in every register, and physically she managed to convey her character’s dual assets of sweetness and tenacity” (ClevelandClassical.com).

Join Wisconsin-based flutist Emma Lundquist for an evening of storytelling through flute and piccolo. This recital will be a mix of classic to modern pieces that showcase the emotional virtuosity and the timbral range of the instrument to sonically weave together tales from mythology to real life events.