Business News Obituaries

Concord chief dies

By | Published on Monday 16 March 2009

The chairman and co-owner of US independent Concord Music Group, Hal Gaba, has died after losing his fight with cancer, aged 63.

Gaba’s background was business, having a degree in finance from Berkeley, and starting his career as city firm William O’Neill & Co, but he moved into the entertainments industry by joining Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin’s Tandem Productions, a successful American television business. Forming long-standing business relationships with Yorkin and, in particular, Lear, by 1990 Gaba was CEO of media and entertainment group ACT III Communications.

That company, though, did not own any music assets, something that Gaba had always wanted to do, hence his pleasure in acquiring, with Lear, the jazz and easy listening focused Concord Music Group in the late nineties. Heading up the label, Gaba got to work with and release music from many greats, including Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Sergio Mendes, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.

Gaba’s Concord, of course, grabbed the headlines in more recent years by forging an alliance with Starbucks, including co-owning the coffee chain’s short lived label venture Hear Music, perhaps most remembered for releasing Paul McCartney’s first post-EMI solo album.

Gaba is survived by his wife and two daughters.



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