Bursting with star power, the Grand Rapids Symphony kicks off its 2016 Picnic Pops series with another explosive Classical Fireworks show on July 14.

The season, which runs mid-July through early August, also includes performances showcasing the music of legendary rock musicians Queen, The Beach Boys and David Bowie. Then, R&B superstars Boyz II Men join the symphony live onstage Aug. 4 for a one-night-only event to cap off the series. 

With summer in full swing, the air-conditioned confines of a local theatre house makes for an artsy escape from the humid heat. Check out some productions happening this month and mark your calendar. 

Emma Ward, aka Emma Loo, doesn’t make weird music just for the sake of being weird. She makes it weird because she is too and she likes it that way. This month the singer-songwriter releases her first solo album, Ancient, at the Tip Top Deluxe. The set list is years in the making for a performer who finally found the tools to make the songs in her head a reality.

Shortly after rising Motown star Little Stevie Wonder found stardom in 1963, he discovered early on that hitting the textbooks was just as important as hitting the stage.

Amidst a string of now classic R&B singles, a teenage Wonder was enrolled at the Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing. While he graduated from the now defunct school in 1968, Wonder would pen some of his biggest hits while earning his diploma.

ONCE is the epitome of a true complex romance, as a Dublin street musician, debating on giving up his singing dreams, meets a beautiful young woman who takes strong interest in his haunting love songs. As the chemistry between them grows, his music soars to powerful new heights, but their unlikely connection turns out to be much deeper and more complicated than expected.

Printmaking is an inimitable and intricate medium. It allows artists to engrave or etch an image onto a surface that will be used to create a series of pieces — each considered an original. 

Local printmakers Ashley McGrath and Erica Lang chatted with Revue — here’s what they had to say.

On a college campus peppered with analogous brick buildings, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum stands alone.

• broad art museum
• east lansing
• whitney stoepel

The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts launched its new series, Coming Home at the end of October. The five exhibitions feature works by emerging and established Michigan artists. One of the shows, Macabre, which features works by more than 20 artists, incorporates themes and imagery from both Halloween and Día de los Muertos. 

Ah, yes, the glory days. Life as a high-school teen was all about cliques, young love, pimple-ridden faces and the drive to fit in with the snide popular kids at any cost. Sounds abysmal, doesn’t it? Film director Michael Lehmann dramatized this confused chunk of life in the black-comedy tale of Heathers.