User:Schneidee/Ken Weiss

Ken Weiss is an experienced entrepreneuer in the entertainment industry having developed and managed companies in the music, live production and the broadcast and motion picture industries.

He began his formal career at Warner Chappell Music and within his first year was appointed Director of Royalties at the world's largest music publishing company. During that time he developed working relationships with songwriters as diverse as Bob Dylan, Ira Gershwin, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and many others.

Three years later Ken launched his independent career and for his first venture joined forces with music legend Stephen Stills. During the next twenty years he expanded Gold Hill Music, Inc., into one of the industry's most successful independent music publishing companies. Gold Hill Music, Inc. has benefited from sales of tens of millions of recordings by Stephen Stills, Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young), Firefall, Aretha Franklin, Joe Cocker, Bob Seger and many others. He also became personal manager to Stephen Stills, negotiating and conducting the business of recording agreements, related recoridng activities, promotions worldwide concert tours, film & television agreements.

While the music industry was growing to an unprecedented size, the television industry was similarly broadening. In 1989, recognizing the potential growth of the medium as a means to market entertainment to wider audiences, he, along with cable television executive Arnie Rosenthal created Rock & Sock Productions. Rock & Sock went on to produce numerous live concerts, live & closed circuit sporting events, live pay per view events, and the worldwide distribution of same. They also designed and developed a major amphitheatre concert at the Flamingo Hilton Hotel in Laughlin, Nevada and produced a series of large scale concerts, continuing today. In 1991, Rock & Sock produced and distributed the first televised rap music special, "Rapmania" and brought together 43 pioneer rap acts live at The Apollo Theater in New York and The Palace in Hollywood. Ken was the Event Producer for the show whose simultaneous satellite transmission was cross-promoted for delayed broadcast on MTV. Rock & Sock continues successfully today having produced hundreds of closed circuit and live music and sporting events.

Continuing to develop his music publishing interests, in 1991 Ken signed up-and-coming songwriter Frank Wildorn to an exclusive music publishing deal. In the ensuing five years, Frank went on to become the most important composer on Broadway having successfully developed four musicals: Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Civil War and Dracula while becoming the first American composer in thirty years to have three plays running simultaneously on Broadway. Rudolf is currently running in Vienna, Austria with the DVD garnering a Platinum award for sales. Havana is in preproduction for a Broadway debut in 2011. Ken's company Bronx Flash Music, Inc. controls all of the Wildhorn music rights.

In 1994, in an effort to further development and enhance his music interests, Ken became a Music Supervisor for feature films. This includes the placing of music in the various movies, working along side composers in the development of the movie's score, negotiating and implementing license agreements and contracts for all music and the procurement and exploitation of same for soundtrack recordings. He has worked with producers and directors such as Woody Allen, producer Jean Doumanian, Forrest Gump producer Steve Tisch, director/actor Jason Alexander, producer Samuel Goldwyn, actor/producer Mel Gibson, director/writer Leon Ichaso, producers Thomas Bliss, Julio Caro and many others.

Throughout Ken's career he has been awarded numerous industry achievement awards for the performance of his musical properties including 20 Gold and Platinum record awards. He is a long time Grammy voting member of The Recording Academy and the Latin Grammys as well as a member of ASCAP and BMI, The Association of Independent Music Publishers and the California Copyright Conference.