Ken Bichel is an American actor, composer, conductor, pianist, and synthesizer musician.
Musical career
Bichel attended the Juilliard School where he graduated with a master's degree in piano performance in 1969. While at Juilliard he met Gershon Kingsley and Robert Moog, the inventor of the music synthesizer. He became a founding member of Kingsley's First Moog Quartet, a live performance synthesizer ensemble, and was recognized as the preeminent synthesizer authority in the New York recording industry from that time on.
Although Bichel is a classically trained pianist, he has spent most of his career playing and recording jazz, rock, and other forms of contemporary music on the piano and the synthesizer. Bichel became a member of the New York-based band Stories is the early 1970s with whom he recorded several hit songs on three different albums until the band broke up in 1973.
Bichel also played and/or conducted several Broadway shows. In 1975, he was hired as the musical director for the show Boccaccio. In 1977, Bichel took an onstage role (which also involved him playing the piano as well) as Norman in the original production of
I Love My Wife
''I Love My Wife'' is a musical with a book and lyrics by Michael Stewart and music by Cy Coleman, based on a play by Luis Rego.
A satire of the sexual revolution of the 1970s, the musical takes place on Christmas Eve in suburban Trenton, New ...
. Bichel won the Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance.
In 1978, he became the assistant conductor and pianist for the Broadway musical
''Working''. During the 1970s, Bichel also worked as a freelance recording musician on synthesizer or piano for various artists and media projects. His work can be heard on over a dozen CDs including the self-titled and ''Soul Searching'' albums by
Average White Band
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on the Rhino label (1974 and 1976),
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her ec ...
' ''
Judith'' (1975) on the Elektra label, and
Chaka Khan
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's ''Chaka Khan Chaka'' on the Ol' Skool Label (1978). He can be heard singing the backup "ahs" with Billy Joel on the mega-hit "Just the Way You Are". Additional recording and/or performance credits include
Irene Cara
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,
Plácido Domingo
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,
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin ( ; March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the " Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in ''Rolling Stone''s "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With ...
,
Peggy Lee
Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, over a career spanning seven decades. From her beginning as a vocalis ...
,
Cindy Bullens
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,
Maureen McGovern
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, the Orchestra of the Sorbonne,
Jane Olivor
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,
Luciano Pavarotti
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,
Carly Simon
Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, memoirist, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation" (No. 13), " The Right Thin ...
,
Paul Simon
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,
Stevie Wonder
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. In 1973 Bichel composed the music for the popular CBS game show ''
Match Game
''Match Game'' is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the last six decades. The game features contestants trying to match answers given by celebrity panelist ...
''.
[A. Ashley Hoff, 'Match Game'' 101: A Backstage History of ''Match Game''" (Castle TNT Press, 2019); ]
Bichel is an internationally acclaimed concert artist and has performed at the La Scala opera house in Milan, the American Music Festival in Geneva, in London for the Duchess of Kent, in Hong Kong for its bi-centennial, in Munich with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and repeatedly at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City.
Television and Film Appearances
TV appearances include The Tonight Show, David Letterman Late Show, the Dick Cavett show, Saturday Night Live, American Bandstand, Regis Philbin, Rosie O'Donnell, etc.
Bichel has also appeared as a featured musician in films like Kinsey, Marvin's Room, and A Family Thing, and made a cameo appearance on film in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose. Bichel has also won an Emmy Award for his music composition work on television.
Personal life
Today, Bichel lives with his wife in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he continues to compose both for his own international solo performances and for other contemporary classical performance ensembles. In 2009 he and his wife, both long-time meditators, became certified teaching monks of Ascension of the Bright Path Ishayas.
Watch and Listen
*
Discography
With
Arif Mardin
Arif Mardin (March 15, 1932 – June 25, 2006) was a Turkish-American music producer, who worked with hundreds of artists across many different styles of music, including jazz, rock, soul, disco and country. He worked at Atlantic Records for ov ...
*''
Journey
Journey or journeying may refer to:
* Travel, the movement of people between distant geographical locations
** Day's journey, a measurement of distance
** Road trip, a long-distance journey on the road
Animals
* Journey (horse), a thoroughbred ra ...
'' (Atlantic, 1974)
References
External links
Internet Movie Database*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bichel, Ken
1945 births
Musicians from Detroit
Emmy Award winners
Drama Desk Award winners
Living people
Juilliard School alumni
20th-century American pianists
American male pianists
21st-century American pianists
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians