Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Stephen Hough is Coming to Town!

Santa Claus Stephen Hough is Coming to Town!

I was just perusing the Utah Symphony Website to look at upcoming performances and saw that Stephen Hough, one of today's most talented pianists, is coming to perform the Saint-Saƫns piano concerto No. 5. I am excitedly waiting for the clock to strike "10:00AM" so that I can purchase my tickets.

Words cannot adequately describe Stephen's level of artistry. You can visit his website here. One of my favorite albums of his is this one - be sure to add it to your collection if you don't have it already.

If you are going to be in the UT/USA area in May then be sure to purchase your tickets for his concert. Maybe I'll see you there!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Roku and Lisztonian - a Beautiful Relationship

Heard of Roku? They are the ingenious creators of a small device that allows people like me to watch their Netflix "Instant Queue" on my home theater system without buying an expensive gaming system or without hooking up an external computer. What does this have to do with my Lisztonian site? A while back I was contacted from a very kind member of Roku's team. He asked if they could use the music/playlist from my website in their developer's SDK (Software Development Kit). So far I have never turned anybody away when asked to use my music, so I gladly approved. Fast forward to today... I came home from work to find a Fedex box with a Roku player and a kind note from the Roku fellow. He thanked me for allowing them to use my music (royalty-free) and hooked me up with a device to try out. I wasted no time in setting it up and I am absolutely stunned at how easy and amazing this little box is! Now I can watch everything on my Netflix "Instant" list without having to sit in front of my little PC monitor (they also connect to other services like Amazon, Pandora, etc). It supports HDMI, Component, and Composite video and includes both wired and wireless network connectivity. It was a total cinch to set up and I had it running in literally minutes.

So if any of you are developers, then you can download the Roku SDK and you just might come across my music :) and even if you are not a developer, you should definitely take a look at their website and consider getting their product ;)