Frank Gari

Frank Gari (born Frank Daniel Garofalo^[1] in New York City on April 1, 1944^[2]) is a popular singer and songwriter from the late 1950s and early 1960s. His best known songs as a performer are "Utopia", "Lullaby of Love", and "Princess", all of which hit the U.S. Top 40 Billboard charts in the early 1960s. Contributing to this early acclaim was Gari's unique rich voice blending with carefully selected melodic instrumentation and backup singers, all of which created a deep sense of magic, ethereal perfection, sincerity and emotion. With song writing partner Roger McGuinn of the Byrds they wrote the song Beach Ball while working with the legendary Bobby Darin. Gari and McGuinn appeared on the 1963 Capitol Record Label billed as the City Surfers. Frank performed his records on shows such as The Merv Griffin Show, The Steve Allen Show, and American Bandstand. He also performed at the world famous "Empire Room" of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in NYC with the Woody Herman Band. That year, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, becoming a jingle writer for TV commercials. Some of his early jingles included Ohio Bell, Genie garage doors, the first Wendy's commercials and hundreds more. Frank has won numerous Emmy and Cleo awards. Frank was honored with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the broadcast industry.

Gari is best known today as a music composer and producer for television, and is also one of the most sought after composers of music for television newscasts in America. His first television theme and image campaign was the popular Catch 5, originally written for WEWS-TV in Cleveland in 1970. Gari also created and produced the most popular television image theme in the history of the broadcast industry, entitled "Hello". He continued composing music for the American Broadcasting Company during the early and mid-1980s, and created such campaigns as Now is the Time, ABC is the Place, and Come On Along with ABC, with Artie Schroeck, as well as That Special Feeling on ABC, and You'll Love it on ABC.^[3] He also composed music for Eyewitness News on ABC such as WABC-TV, ABC's Good Morning America (in 1989), CBS This Morning, The Phil Donahue Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Gari also has international acclaim; In 1993 he composed the 'Sky Symphony' theme for BSkyB in Europe, and the 1995 'It's On Sky' (AKA 'No Turning Back') image piece. The Sky signature from the 1990s was spread to all the Sky channels, including Sky One, Sky Movies, and the defunct Sky Soap and Sky Movies Gold. Sky News used The Great News Package as their main theme from 1989 (when they launched their four-channel Astra lineup) until September 1993, and continued to use it (for main news bulletins on Sky News only) alongside the 'Sky Symphony' until 1995. He also composed the early 1990s theme for RTL in Germany called "News Line", which was later adopted by Maryland Public Television in the US, and in the Philippines it was adapted for the primetime newscast TV Patrol on ABS-CBN.

On January 12, 2015, Warner Music Group's Warner/Chappell Production Music unit acquired Gari Communications.

Television news music packages written by Frank Gari

References

External links

• Frank Gari in IMDb
• Frank Gari in allmusic.com
• GariMediaGroup.com - Official Website
• SouthernMedia-NMSA.com