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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

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!

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”

NY Premiere of “Through A Glass, Darkly”

mike — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:49:03 +0000

The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, under the direction of Dr. Charles Beale, will be premiering Through A Glass, Darkly on June 30, 2010 at 8pm, at the NYU Skirball Center on the corner of Laguardia Place and Washington Square South (W 4th St) in Greenwich Village, NYC.

Tickets are on sale now. One performance only. Hope you can make it!

“Rock Band Live!” workshops in NYC

brent — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:54:43 +0000

Mike and I have written and produced the arrangements for “Rock Band Live”, the first-ever live entertainment adaptation of the hugely popular MTV Games video game. Culminating the end of a two-week workshop rehearsal period, three private performances begin today thru Friday at 42nd Street Studios in New York.

The show was written by our long-time pal Joey Wartnerchaney and produced by RWS & Associates Entertainment, Inc., in conjunction with Cedar Fair Entertainment Company and MTV Games.

Featured songs are mashups of “We Got The Beat / We Will Rock You / Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Any Way You Want It / Hit Me With Your Best Shot” as well as interactive live gameplay with audience members.

“Trilogy” to be premiered at upcoming TC-GMC concert

mike — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:41:40 +0000

This March, the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus will premiere my newest choral work, “Trilogy” — comprised of three settings of texts by Tony Kushner. The last of the three movements, “I Want More Life“, was premiered April 2009 by the TC-GMC in conjunction with the Guthrie Theatre’s Tony Kushner Festival launch.

The first movement of “Trilogy” is “It Is Very Simple” (text from Homebody/Kabul) and the second is “There Is A Little House In Heaven” (text from Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Browne). This commission was graciously underwritten by TC-GMC Board Chair Jeffrey Bores and his partner, Michael Hawkins.

Performances are March 26-27, 2010 at Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis. I will be attending both concerts and participating in post-concert question and answer sessions with TC-GMC Artistic Director Dr. Stan Hill.

Please visit the TC-GMC site for tickets to this concert, “LifeSongs: The Music of Living”.

A Trilogy of New Choral Works | Meet The Composer

Roscoe, 1994-2009

brent — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:48:20 +0000

We lost our Piggy last night. She was 15 years old and a very good girl.

Below is a video from Fire Island in 1998 of her younger (sight-filled) days. Roscoe was only 4 and Charlie was 18 months, swimming and romping with their friend Ethel. We miss them all.

A Big Week Ahead

brent — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:47:30 +0000

Alot of research, planning, and work culminates this week with some exciting things. We’re changing notation programs, installing acoustics improvements in the studio, and completing vocal tracking of Mike’s demo with a visit from a Tony-winning Broadway star.

Switching to Sibelius

I’ve had misgivings about Finale’s seriousness toward the Mac ever since Sibelius released their Mac OS X native app 18 months before Finale. Some of Finale’s OS X implementation (i.e. printing parts as PDF) is still broken even 5 paid upgrades later. Finale’s yearly upgrades are $100, the file formats are not backwards compatible so upgrades are essentially mandatory, yet serious bugs remain unfixed and new features are rarely worth the cost (either pandering to the education market or playing catchup to Sibelius). In addition, I couldn’t even launch Finale 2008 (a “MOTU bug“, they said), but it mysteriously fixed itself in Finale 2009.

We’ve demoed Sibelius 6, tested MusicXML file transfers out of Finale, and had our friend and professional music copyist Alden Terry give us a quick walkthru of Sibelius. The tipping point was Sibelius’ support for ReWire — a potentially exponential timesaver letting us sync vocal arrangements in real-time to our DP projects. We’re convinced, and today we start our transition.

Most of the Sibelius vs. Finale posts I came across were horribly outdated, so I will be live-blogging our transition — warts and all. Look here for my series of blog posts about switching from Finale to Sibelius.

Acoustic Improvements

Last fall, we reconfigured our studio (featuring a snazzy custom desk from KK Audio). This new layout made the acoustic imperfections in our room even more troublesome, but theme park season and general lack of acoustic theory kept me from addressing it.

I saw a college friend’s studio pictures on facebook, and he pointed me in the direction of RealTraps. Mike and I had been reluctant to just ignorantly plaster our walls with (honestly, ugly) acoustic foam, so the panel design already appealed to us. I’ve been corresponding with RealTraps’ on-hand acoustics expert “JWL” who looked at photos of our room and was really helpful in identifying what configuration would give us the most improvements.

I’ve measured our room’s frequency response in its current state, and I’ll do the same afterward. Look here for the results!

Broadway’s Alice Ripley

Mixing is progressing nicely on the 3-song demo for the new Kevin Del Aguila/Michael Shaieb musical, “The Protagonists”. The last vocalist is now confirmed, as Mike wrote earlier.

This Thursday, we’re happy to have Alice Ripley (Next To Normal, The Rocky Horror Show) joining us in the studio singing the part of “Eagle Woman”.

(Fans of Go-Go Beach will also know her from demo track #14: “The Love That Cannot Be”.)

Alice recently won a Tony award for the role of “Diana” in the Broadway musical Next To Normal, and we’re thrilled to have her back again.

Eagle Woman Has Landed

mike — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:58:44 +0000

Ms. Alice Ripley is joining our cast of superheroes as Eagle Woman this week in our recording studio for our demo of The Protagonists.

Kevin and I are really excited to have her. Although she will not be sporting her wings and feathers, she will be bringing that incredible voice with her. We are happy to report that the Eagle Woman has Landed!

Back in the Studio recording “The Protagonists” demo

mike — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:20:44 +0000

Last year I started working with bookwriter/lyricist Kevin Del Aguila on a new musical called “The Astonishing Return Of The Protagonists” about middle-aged superheroes trying to recapture past glories. This past week we’ve been in the studio recording demos of the first three songs, and the cast we’ve assembled is amazing and sounds fantastic.

Marc Kudisch (9 to 5, Assassins, The Wild Party) as Captain Marvelous
Andy Karl (9 to 5, Legally Blonde, Altar Boyz) as Voltman
Christopher Sieber (Shrek The Musical, Spamalot) as The Sensational Clump
Tyler Maynard (The Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins, Altar Boyz) as Fishboy
Kate Wetherhead (Legally Blonde) as Penelope
Tituss Burgess (Guys and Dolls, The Little Mermaid), Lisa Howard (9 to 5, Spelling Bee), Cassondra Kellam, and Michael Marcotte (Stephen Schwartz’s Making Good, Seance) as The Citizens
Todd Alan Johnson (a man of 1000 voices) as The Narrator, Volcanix, and all the other voices.

When everything is mixed, we’ll post the demo tracks here — but for now we’re still waiting to find our Eagle Woman. Coming soon!