Meet Karen Biehl
When did you first discover the piano?
My father played the piano all the time and so I would hear him practicing every night. Our house was always filled with the sound of him playing Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, etc. He had played piano in a band and been an organist during his time in the service and played the organ at church as well while I was growing up. Sometimes during the postlude I’d sit next to him and he would tell me when to pull out the stops. I remember seeing "Fiddler on the Roof" and coming home, going to the piano and playing “Sunrise, Sunset" on the piano. At that point, my parents decided I should take piano lessons.
How long have you been playing the piano?
I’ve never thought about this, but I just counted and the answer is 46 years! During much of that time though, my focus was on other instruments (which I’ll explain in more detail later).
So you did take piano lessons. HOw long did you take?
I started when I was 8 and continued taking piano lessons until I graduated from college (SMU) at age 21.
Do you play any other instruments?
Yes, when I started playing piano, I also began playing the violin in our school orchestra. I played in orchestras from age 8 until I graduated from SMU. In addition to playing in our high school orchestra, I played violin in the SMU Symphony and the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. When I was 17, I began singing and studied voice (opera) for 17 years. My degrees were in Vocal Performance for both my undergraduate degree at SMU and for my masters at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. My focus at the age of 17 became on pursuing a singing career.
What do you love most about being a pianist?
I most enjoy how you can write for any instrument using the piano. It’s as if the keyboard is home bass for all the instruments.
What is the best concert you have ever attended?
It was a performance of “Il Trittico” that we saw at the Met last year. It was the perfect combination of beautiful music by Puccini set to Broadway style sets and staging. The singing, acting and visuals were all wonderful and since it was three contrasting one-act operas, it was like seeing three shows in one night of varying styles, each outstanding in its own right.
What was the first song you ever wrote?
It was actually many songs in the form of what I called a New Age Operetta. In 1999 after a trip to Australia, I could suddenly compose and many pieces poured through me all at once. It was more like taking dictation, as it felt like the music already existed and I was just translating it. It was called “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” and was set to music mostly for soprano and sounded like movie soundtrack. Many of those songs I set to solo piano and later released. Years before I started composing, when I was 21, I was meditating and had a vision of handwritten scores of my music. I was puzzled afterwards, because I didn’t think I could compose at the time. The truth is though, even when I was studying singing, I was always singing my own melodies to myself, making up vocalizes and writing my own cadenzas for arias, rather than using the standard ones.
What was the first song you recorded and released?
It was an entire album called “Journey to True Purpose: A Guided Meditation for Students”. My fiancé is a band director at a high school and he wanted a guided meditation to help his students focus in the classroom and become better prepared for life. I recorded a guided meditation, set to my compositions, that he used in the classroom. After listening to the meditation, the students wrote down their answers to the questions posed during the meditation. Their answers were pretty interesting (and moving!) to read.
In 2016, I released the guided meditation and the album included each musical piece that was in the meditation as bonus tracks.
Listen Now: Apple Music | Spotify | Amazon
What inspires you?
Pretty much everything inspires me! But I will have to say that adversity and stress (often blessings in disguise) probably inspire me most. Creativity happens most intensely when I am feeling emotional about something. I work 9-5 as the pro bono coordinator at a large law firm, which can be pretty demanding at times, and my way of coping with stress is to come home and compose.
My father recently passed away, and I was pretty upset so I decided to compose a song in his honor. (I didn’t really decide, it just happened as is the case when I am most inspired.) When I was young, he wrote a silly poem to me that he set to a very campy song. The melody in “To My Father” was based on that silly tune, set to a minor key. I wrote it to thank him for all he did for me, both musically and as a father.
How do you begin your songwriting/composing process?
It usually just happens to me, in various ways. Sometimes I sit at the piano and the notes come through my fingers. Other times, I feel like I’m enveloped in a misty field of notes/energy particles that I hear and then translate into physical form. On rare occasions, I have seen the notes written on the score. Most often though, it is by sitting at the piano and just letting my fingers play something.
What is the perfect environment for you to inspire creativity?
Any environment works. It has more to do with my state of consciousness, but if I had to choose one, I’d say right in front of my piano or keyboard.
What has been your most embarrassing moment while performing?
That’s a tough question, but I’ll go with the time during an opera audition, when I was singing “Stridono Lassu” from “I Pagliacci” and it was going really well until I went for the final note (a high note) and nothing came out.
What is a random fun fact people probably don't know about you?
I won a jalapeño pepper eating contest two years in a row at age 19 and 20 (eating 14 in a minute both times).
If you had to pick one artist that inspires you, or that you aspire to follow in their footsteps, who would it be?
I don’t really aspire to be like anybody else and instead focus more on being the best that I can be. That being said, I’m most inspired by: 1) my fiancé (Maestro Joseph Lento) who teaches music to students and is able to prepare band concerts with new students in no time with minimal school supplies and 2) my father, without whom nothing would have been possible for me. My father taught me, through his example, to not let anything stop you from pursuing your passion and dreams.
What's your favorite "Christmas" musical memory?
When I was young, we would light a candle on the advent wreath every Sunday before Christmas and we’d all stand around the piano and sing Christmas carols as my father accompanied us on the piano. I also really enjoyed the candle light service we’d attend every Christmas Eve, with my father as organist.