Biography
Gary Meister is an award-winning composer, music producer and musician, and founder/owner of Naturalistic Music + Sound (www.naturalistic.net), an NYC-based production company that creates original music for film, TV, advertising, virtual reality & emerging media.
His credits include Joe's Violin (2017 Oscar Nom., Best Doc. Short), In The Dark (Peabody Award), The New Yorker Presents (Amazon), Death Row Stories (CNN), A League Of Ordinary Gentlemen (Magnolia Pictures), Sesame Street, The Tudors, Locked Up (Discovery), Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, Weeds, Making Dazed (AMC), Everyday Food (Martha Stewart Omnimedia), The Franchise (Showtime), Eavesdropping With Alan Cumming (Oxygen), Sportsfan (Jon Stewart's Busboy Prod.), and a wide range of documentary films that examine issues that reflect his concerns and deal with issues such as the environment, women's rights, Native American rights, education & childhood development, prison, torture, AIDS, 9/11, The Holocaust, healthcare & the death penalty. Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead 2, which features his score, opened in 2014 in over 650 theaters across the US.
He has created music for a who's who of media forerunners incl. HBO, NBC, CBS, Amazon, TED, Magnolia Pictures, Showtime, Jon Stewart's Busboy Prod., Alex Gibney's Jigsaw Prod., Martha Stewart Omnimedia, AKPD Media (Davids Plouffe & Axelrod),VH1, MTV, Subaru, Pfizer, PG&E, Discovery, Bravo, CNN, MLB Productions, Nickelodeon, Oxygen, The Movie Channel, TLC, AMC, UBS, PBS, Spike, The Movie Channel, TruTV, Amnesty International, The Tennis Channel, Logo, The Smithsonian Channel, Link TV, Food Bank, Actual Reality Pictures, Moxie Firecracker & Gabriel Films, among others.
Gary regularly collaborates with some of the finest musicians and engineers in the business, including talent such as Jill Sobule, Rhett Miller (Old 97s), Dennis Diken (The Smithereens), Todd Reynolds (Bang On A Can) & Mike Viola.
His music supervision credits incl. the film Hank: 5 Year From The Brink (Joe Berlinger) and the upcoming Judee Sill: How To Give My Heart Away. As a curator of music for unique live events he has worked with Santigold, Steve Earle & Amanda Palmer, and has produced/moderated the film scoring panel series Scoring On The Bowery Doesn't Mean What It Used To for the CBGB Festival, which has featured Vernon Reid, David Mansfield, Stephen Trask & Nathan Larson.
He was the leader (singer/songwriter/guitar) of the power-pop band You And What Army, and produced their analog record "Kinda Wanna" (released on Big Deal/Caroline Records) which garnered rave reviews and extensive airplay. You And What Army, a fixture on the NYC club scene, were named Best Power Pop Band by NY Press. Gary has studied gamelan music in Bali, and was a member of the gamelan ensemble Darma Swara, whose many accomplishments include sold out shows at Lincoln Center and Central Park's Summerstage. He has also worked with pioneering ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, where he assisted in the development of Lomax's Global Jukebox, and he was host/producer for the Knitting Factory's pioneering webcast "The Song."
Gary lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.
