Roll Over

Two “Alexander’s House” songs voted as concert favorites

brent — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:30:33 +0000

The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC just announced that two songs from Alexander’s House, “Get Out The Gay” and “They Played a Tape of the Pope”, were the top vote-getters in the Verizon Wireless-sponsored “Text2Vote” post-concert survey. Woohoo!

Overheard in the Theatre

brent — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:15:25 +0000

Overheard at the GMCW concert And I Am Telling You, Lisner Auditorium, Washington DC 6/05/11
Featuring the world premiere of Alexander’s House in the first half, special appearance by Jennifer Holliday in the second half.
Orchestra center aisle, from the two sitting right behind us.

Before the concert:

The second half can only be better than the first… 11 songs in the first half? Hopefully it will go fast.

At intermission, after Alexander’s House:

Well, I don’t know how Jennifer Holliday will top that.

Watch the ‘Brief Reunion’ official trailer

brent — Thu, 12 May 2011 23:51:36 +0000

The official website for ‘Brief Reunion’ went online yesterday at briefreunion.com.

Watch the trailer below — which includes pieces of Mike’s film score:

“Caligula Maximus” mentioned in NY Times feature

brent — Wed, 04 May 2011 18:50:10 +0000

Randy Weiner, co-author of “Caligula Maximus”, was profiled in the New York Times ‘Fashion & Style’ section today about “Sleep No More”, and the first three paragraphs were all about “Caligula”!

He Puts The Maximus In The Circus –Jed Lipinski, nytimes.com, May 4, 2011

(here is the nytimes.com direct link, beware the paywall)

Best “Caligula Maximus” summary yet

brent — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:24:26 +0000

Here is a great feature on “Caligula Maximus“, the hard-to-accurately-explain theatre/nightclub hybrid show I wrote and produced the music for that opened at House of Yes last week.

Caligula Maximus :: Black Party by way of Hedwig & Cirque du Soleil
–John Russell, edgefireisland.com, April 15, 2011

Advance press for San Diego “Darkly”

brent — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:05:22 +0000

Gay Men’s Chorus wants to ‘friend’ you this weekend
–Charlene Baldridge, sdnews.com, April 7, 2011
“Friend Me” featuring “Through A Glass, Darkly”
–performingartslive.com

Advance press for “Caligula Maximus”

brent — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:31:53 +0000

Here are some press items in advance of my show “Caligula Maximus” opening soon at House of Yes in Brooklyn.

PRESS RELEASE: THE SAINT AT LARGE® Presents Caligula Maximus – A New Musical Disco Circus – featuring NYC Underground Superstar Kayvon Zand
–Popular Publicity, March 30, 2011
Kayvon Zand Leads CALIGULA MAXIMUS At House Of Yes
–BroadwayWorld.com, March 30, 2011
Jamin Ruhren, Kayvon Zand, et al. Set for Caligula Maximus
–TheaterMania.com, March 30, 2011

West Coast Premiere of “Through A Glass, Darkly” Announced

brent — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:59:41 +0000

The San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus will be performing the West Coast premiere of Mike’s oratorio “Through A Glass, Darkly” on April 9-10, 2011 in La Jolla at the 500-seat Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center’s David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre.

The SDGMC production will be the 6th for “Darkly” since the World Premiere by the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus in March 2008.

Tickets are $25-$40 and can be purchased online at SDGMC.org.

San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus Acquires West Coast Premiere of THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY -broadwayworld.com, 2/17/11
Gay men’s chorus sets auditions on Feb. 27 for “Through a Glass, Darkly” -sdgln.com, 2/22/11

Overheard in the Theatre

brent — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:41:56 +0000

Overheard at Angels in America, Signature Theatre Company, NYC 12/09/10
Row G, center – at the top of the second intermission:

Is it over? Or another hour… Is it over? Oh, they just give us a break every so often.

Cast Announced for Private Reading of “…The Protagonists”

brent — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:33:56 +0000

The December 6th reading of Mike’s new musical “The Astonishing Return of the Protagonists!” got picked up by Playbill.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Rachel York, Chris Sieber, Orfeh, John Tartaglia, Marc Kudisch Are Super Heroes in Protagonists!

Apple TV OS 4.1 now increments play counts on a shared library

brent — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:41:29 +0000

Apple TV now increments the Play Count and Last Played Date of a music track played from a shared iTunes library. (Skips are still not counted.)

Shared movies are also marked as “watched” after watching. Nice!

The November OS 4.1 update of the new Apple TVs (black, $99 – amazon link) brought this new feature that I have not seen covered yet in the press.

This means that the listening habits of the Apple TV — which is bound to be the central media playback device in many households — now count toward Smart Playlists based on Most Played, Recently Played and other similar criteria.

Previously, the only way to accomplish this required “pushing” music from a source library to the Apple TV as an AirTunes destination. Less than convenient — and requires you to bypass the nice Apple TV interface.

I had previously devised an overly elaborate workaround but that is no longer needed. Yay!

More features I’d like to see come to Apple TV music:

iTunes DJ (altho the Remote app and the “push” method above work fine at a party full of iPhones)
Set star ratings remotely and/count skips (I’ve got an unrated, newly-encoded Apple Lossless master music library in desperate need of some curating)
Only display playlists being shared by remote iTunes (all of them show up right now)

Previously:

Watching my first movie with Netflix app for iPhone (UPDATED)

brent — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:40:38 +0000

(UPDATE: The all-new Apple TV (amazon.com) is real. Netflix is built-in. It now makes even more sense why Netflix for iPhone is exclusively focused on Instant queues.)

Yesterday, Netflix updated their iPad app to version 1.1.0 which added iPhone and iPod touch support. netflix.com has been crashing my Mobile Safari on iPhone 4 (possibly just an incompatibly with iOS 4?), so I was eager to have an official native app to manage my DVD queue while mobile.

We also wanted to test the movie streaming, so we ventured out and got an Apple Composite AV Cable (amazon.com). These are my impressions:

The Netflix on iPad allows you to manage your DVD queue as well as your Instant queue.
The interface of Netflix on iPhone, while way more native than iPad’s rendering of the actual Netflix website, only gives access to titles available for streaming. Therefore, you can only manage your Instant queue on Netflix for iPhone. (There are other iPhone apps of varying quality that will do actual DVD queue management.)
Removing a film from your Instant Queue on iPhone is not immediately obvious. You must be on the movie info screen and tap the “In instant Q” button, which then brings up a confirmation prompt asking “Remove from instant Queue?”. Even then, nothing happens — the movie info remains on screen until you go back to the Queue. It’s a minor quibble, but it would feel more iPhoney to have a Swipe-to-Delete action or an “Edit” toggle on the main Instant Queue list screen.
Play quality on the iPhone screen seems nice enough, but I’ve read reports that it is a huge battery drain.
Luckily the AV cable includes a USB cable for supplying power to your device thru the dock connector. As a bonus, our Sony Bravia has a USB-style port labeled “DMe^x/Service” which happens to supply enough power to kick my iPhone 4 into charge mode.
Not surprisingly, the “DMe^x/Service” does not have enough power to charge an iPad. You’ll need to use battery power or be close enough to an outlet to use the (included) power adapter.
Unfortunately, the iPhone 4 bumper case prevents the AV cable from fully connecting due to the larger older-style dock connector. It doesn’t actually matter (yet), because…
Netflix for iPhone doesn’t support video out via the dock connector (yet, as of v1.1.0). iPad does already — and the dock connector is universal — so we watched this fine Chris Pine vehicle using Netflix for iPad instead.
Video quality out the iPad via the Composite cable was fine but not great. Being streaming video, I doubt it would make a different, but another option is the Apple Component AV Cable (amazon.com) if your TV supports that input.

The best thing about the AV cable is that it is long. Secondly, the video cable is separate from the R/L audio pair. I can think of many circumstances out in the field where this would be really handy. I also agree with the criticism that the RCA connectors themselves are too smooth on the outside and difficult to disconnect, but I expect they’ll mostly remain attached to the back of our TV so that’s not a deal-breaker. If it is, there are other brands of compatible connectors. Maybe even one that fits thru the iPhone 4 bumper.

In any case, it’s workable. The streaming inventory isn’t too huge on Netflix yet anyway. But other apps like YouTube and iPod support video out, so the cable isn’t going to go to waste. Also, Apple may surprise us at their upcoming Sept. 1 event — maybe these iTV rumors will finally materialize. If not, the boxee box is right around the corner!

Signature Difference

brent — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:27:50 +0000

Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless

vs.

Sent from my iPhone

Seriously.

Even if you do know how to change these default signatures, which philosophy would you rather have behind the phone you use?

Duh, Use Bluetooth Speakers to Act Like Airfoil for iPhone

brent — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:20:16 +0000

(not exactly Airfoil for iPhone — similar, only without the Wi-Fi.)

I’ve posted a few times about ways to use iPhones with Rogue Amoeba’s desktop app “Airfoil” and iTunes streaming.

There’s no great (or official) solution yet for wi-fi audio streaming from an iPhone — but there is definitely plenty of interest still. This blog’s top keyword searches continue to be “airfoil iphone”, “airfoil for iphone”, and “airfoil iphone app”. Until just a bit ago, I totally forgot that Bluetooth was an option.

I haven’t tried any of these devices, but the reviews seem to imply they work well.

Time Out New York feature on NYCGMC “Darkly”

brent — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:35:20 +0000

This week’s Time Out New York magazine features an interview with Mike about next week’s NYC premiere of “Through A Glass, Darkly” by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus.

Chorus sings about addiction
“High” is a meth-themed concert.
Time Out New York / Issue 769 : Jun 24–30, 2010
By Beth Greenfield

This concert is one night only – Wednesday June 30 at 8pm. Tickets are still available through the Skirball Center website.

Previously:

NY Premiere of “Through A Glass, Darkly”