6-Pack of Things To Do In Tacoma Sept. 15-21, 2025

Because Tacoma this week doesn’t merely offer things to do—it bends spacetime into a delirious carnival of them: pianos turned séance machines, pumpkin pints debated in real time like gourds on trial, ancestral migrations re-mapped in light and sound, Italian demons chewing through cinema seats, banjos vibrating highways into memory, and blues transfigured into prayer. It’s spectacle and sermon, ritual and riot, art and ale all colliding in a single week—Tacoma’s cultural bloodstream surging so hot and strange you’ll wonder how the city can possibly hold it all without bursting into Beautiful Angle broadsides and Monkeyshine sparks.

Keyboard Series: Nicolas Namoradze | Tuesday, Sept. 16

What happens when a piano stops being a polite parlor ornament and instead becomes a cosmic relay station, channeling memory, mathematics, and raw nerve into something both impossible and inevitable? Enter Nicolas Namoradze, the Georgian-born, globe-spanning phenom crowned Pianist of the Year by the UK Critics’ Circle in 2022, winner of the Honens International Piano Competition, and one of the most feverishly watched hands in classical music. His concerts aren’t recitals so much as séances—fractals rendered in sound, etudes spiraling like galaxies, harmonies that refuse to stay put. Schneebeck Concert Hall will thrum under his touch as Tacoma’s third-annual Keyboard Series dares to redefine what the instrument can say, and to whom. If you’ve ever doubted that 88 keys could summon entire worlds, this is your conversion moment. Concert, 7:30 p.m., Schneebeck Concert Hall, UPS, $25 / $20 discounted / free for UPS & K-12 students, photo credit: Tina Krohn

Peaks & Pints Cooler Postfunk: After Namoradze’s last chord fades, follow the resonance with Timber Ales Strawberry Brûlée pastry stout. A velvet avalanche of roasted malt, cream-slick vanilla, and brûléed strawberry, it drinks like the encore to a concert that refused to stay on the page: decadent, unruly, and impossible to forget.

Grit & Grain Podcast: Episode 160 | Wednesday, Sept. 17

Consider this your carved-lantern séance with the gods of squash and spice: Grit & Grain drags its mics into Peaks & Pints’ Events Room to unravel the sticky, cinnamon-dusted saga of pumpkin beer. Colonial survival brew turned modern pie-in-a-pint, imperialized arms race turned cultural lightning rod—pumpkin beer is beloved and reviled, kitsch and craft, nostalgia and novelty—and Episode 160 is here to taste through it all, jack-o’-lanterns in a row. Expect debate, laughter, malt-heavy digressions, and storytelling that makes you believe gourds were always meant for kettles as much as porches. Beer podcast, 3:30–5:30 p.m., Peaks & Pints Events Room, Proctor District, Tacoma, no cover

Peaks & Pints Tap #23 Pairing: Forget prefunk or postfunk—this one happens live. As the pumpkin beer saga unfolds, you’ll be drinking the evidence: Tap #23, our Proctor Pumpkin Pandemonium soapbox. Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, roasted gourd—it’s all there as panelists argue whether pumpkin beer is salvation, kitsch, or America’s most stubborn seasonal ritual.

The Lemon Sessions: Migrations, Forced & Chosen | Thursday-Friday, Sept. 18-19

Some performances politely stay in their lane; this one detonates the lanes entirely. The Lemon Sessions returns to the Armory with Migrations, Forced & Chosen, a synesthetic fever dream where music, dance, poetry, and massive projected art collide to map our most universal story: how we move, why we move, what we carry. Americana fiddles tangle with Cuban trios, Andean rhythms with Persian poetry, Filipino lullabies with African diaspora pulse, while Tacoma poet Claudia Castro-Luna stitches words into sky-high visuals painted by Deepti Agrawal, Fulgencio Lazo, and Saiyare Refaei. Hosted by Silong Chhun, it’s less concert than kaleidoscope, less lecture than living archive—ancestral ghosts and modern migrants braided into one sprawling ritual. Performance, 7:30 p.m., Tacoma Armory Parade Floor, Hilltop Tacoma, $18.50–$47 at tacomaartslive.org

Peaks & Pints Cooler Prefunk: Before the Armory walls bloom with art and sound, steady your compass with Fort George City of Dreams. Bright citrus, soft tropical haze—this pale ale is a departure and arrival in a single sip, a reminder that every story carries a map.

Demons at the Blue Mouse | Friday, Sept. 19

What happens when Dario Argento bankrolls Lamberto Bava and hands him a locked theater, a cursed mask, and a synth-heavy soundtrack stuffed with Mötley Crüe and Billy Idol? You get Demons (1985), a feral Italian splatter classic where the movie eats the audience alive—literally. It’s punk energy fused with giallo grotesquerie: razor teeth, gore geysers, bricked-up exits, and a finale so delirious it hurls motorcycles, swords, and helicopters into the cinema as if subtlety had never existed. This is midnight horror as the VHS gods intended—loud, lewd, ludicrous, and dripping neon ichor. Friday Night Frights unleashes it in Proctor’s velvet-lined temple of cult cinema, the Blue Mouse. Film, 10 p.m., Blue Mouse Theatre, Proctor District, Tacoma, $11.40, photo credit: Synapse Films

Peaks & Pints Cooler Prefunk: Before you let Demons devour your popcorn and psyche, arm yourself with Double Mountain Killer Red Fresh Hop IRA. Ruby-red malt glow shot through with Yakima green fire, caramel warmth colliding with sticky resin like Billy Idol crashing a masquerade. Sweet, savage, and primed for midnight chaos.

Benny Sidelinger Live at the Eleanor | Saturday, Sept. 20

There’s a particular kind of magic when a banjo hums like a prayer and then rips open the night like a freight train through fog. That’s Benny Sidelinger: voice weathered by miles, guitar vibrating like asphalt under worn tires, songs that feel half confessional, half campfire séance. His set at Tacoma Arts Live‘s Live at the Eleanor folds intimacy into spectacle, the Tacoma Armory Roosevelt Room remade as a living room where stories travel farther than the chords that carry them. Equal parts Americana grit, blues ache, and backroad poetry, Sidelinger doesn’t just perform—he testifies, leaving you convinced the ghosts of every highway you’ve ever driven are still riding shotgun. Concert, doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m., Tacoma Armory Roosevelt Room, Hilltop Tacoma, $23.75 at tacomaartslive.org

Peaks & Pints Cooler Prefunk: Before the banjo cracks open the night, ground yourself with Alaskan Smoked Porter. Campfire-dark, alderwood-smoked, soulful as driftwood fires—it carries the same weary ache and warmth as Sidelinger’s songs. Sip slow, let the smoke curl like memory.

Blues Vespers | Sunday, Sept. 21

Consider it a sermon where the pulpit hums with slide guitar and the hymnal wheezes through a harmonica reed: Blues Vespers returns to the University of Puget Sound’s Kilworth Chapel, folding blues, poetry, and reflection into one twilight gathering. This round features Rod Cook & Toast—genre-shapeshifters who can shuffle from Americana grit to surf twang to blues heartbreak—joined by Tacoma’s Jay Mabin, a harmonica sage who can make you laugh one breath and cry the next. Hosted by Pastor Dave Brown and Chaplain Dave Wright, this isn’t Sunday school, it’s Sunday soul: part ritual, part communion, part reminder that the blues has always been prayer—half defiance, half grace. Concert, 5–6:30 p.m., Kilworth Memorial Chapel, UPS, free, all ages

Cooler Postfunk: After the last note fades, ease the evening down with Trappistes Rochefort 8. Dark, contemplative, humming with fig, raisin, caramel, and a whisper of smoke—it’s hymn and confessional in equal measure. Some prayers are meant to be poured, not spoken.

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