Full Circle

Art Garfunkel makes his solo sound track debut when Tri-Star releases “Sing” March 3. The lilting half of Simon & Garfunkel performs the anthem, “We’ll Never Say Goodbye,” heard at the finale of the film, which centers on a fictional teen couple involved in Sing, a real-life music competition held for 45 years in the Brooklyn high school system.

It’s more than just a gig for Garfunkel--he and Simon actually competed in Sing as teen-agers.

Co-producer Craig Zadan said that the song, written by screenwriter/composer Dean Pitchford and Tom Snow, embodies the film’s theme of neighborhood survival and the preservation of ethnic tradition.

“We showed him (Garfunkel) several key scenes from the movie and played him the song,” Zadan said. “He went crazy for it. And because he’d been in Sing himself, he agreed to do it. In a way, he’s completing a cycle.”

The soundtrack album and three singles by other artists are due out “imminently” from Columbia Records. The idea is to get audience interest steamrolling early--the same marketing ploy used so successfully with “Footloose,” which Zadan co-produced and Pitchford scripted.