Preaching to the Choir – New Film Featuring Gospel Music

The following comes to TBGB courtesy of ThinkTank Marketing in New York City.

Incidentally, Nona Hendryx, member of LaBelle and attendee at last year’s Gospel Music Workshop of America/Gospel Announcers Guild sessions, wrote the musical score.

LINK TO THE TRAILER

FOR CAST BIOS, PRODUCTION STILLS AND MORE
http://preachingtothechoirmovie.com/

SYNOPSIS
Estranged since the death of their parents years ago, twin brothers, Teshawn and Wesley Tucker, have taken radically different paths in life. Wes (Darien Sills-Evans) has become a minister in a Harlem gospel church while Te (Billoah Greene) perpetrates the gangster lifestyle as Hip Hop star Zulu. They are forced into reconciliation when Te flees from LA to his childhood home in Harlem to hide from his enraged record producer, Bull Sharky (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

Te tries to disappear in his preacher brother’s world of the gospel church but becomes entrenched in the community and finds himself reconnecting with his past by becoming involved in the failing church choir. There, he is comforted by Aunt June (Novella Nelson), his loving surrogate mother with a musical past, and is falling for Kia (Janine Green), a lovely church goer with her fingers on the pulse of the history, and magic, of Harlem . As Bull Sharky and his posse move east tracking Te down, Te and Wes must confront their own demons and attempt to work out their differences.

Through the intersection of gospel and hip hop, east coast and west coast, the sacred and the secular, Preaching to the choir weaves a story of unconditional love and redemption, a story of community.

NOTABLES
Preaching to the Choir is the winner of the prestigious 2005 American Black Film Festival’s Best Actor and Audience awards. Preaching to the Choir is also the winner of the prestigious 2005 American Black Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize.

Preaching to the Choir features original music composed by R&B Hall of Fame Inductee Nona Hendryx (original member of the female trio LaBelle); the father of contemporary gospel and Grammy award winner Edwin Hawkins (creator of the world renowned hit “Oh, Happy Day); and the gospel ensemble Broadway Inspirational Voices.

Preaching to the Choir also features the music of R&B diva Patti LaBelle; gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and the Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir.