Zimmer Info - Preacher's Wife

Welcome to the Un-unofficial Zimmer Page of...

' The Preacher's Wife '

"It's more fun... seriously!"

This is an extension of Zinfo.

Touchstone Pictures' remake of The Bishop's Wife, starring Gregory Hines, had Hans busy late last year. Penny Marshall has helmed The Preacher's Wife, which opened across the US December 13th, 1996. It is out now on NTSC video.

Entertainment Tonight highlighted the music in a 2 minute segment, on November 1st, 1996. From what looked like the Todd-AO scoring stage, Hans along with Penny Marshall present spoke briefly, about scoring, and about working with Whitney Houston. Snippets of the score were heard - the aim being described as "heavenly, yet real." Sounding more classically tinged than usual, violins were predominant; a touch of R&B was not surprising (Babyface is one of the producers) - something Penny seems to enjoy together. Here's the soundbite from that segment:

Preacher's Wife ET interview (28.8 Mono 158k)

The soundtrack has been released on Arista Records, as a Whitney Houston album, featuring Annie Lennox (vocalist & writer). There isn't a score track included. Hans is a mate of Penny, and she was generous as an album producer to include a decent amount of score in her first collaboration with him on A League of Their Own. Their second was mostly score - Renaissance Man (Army Intelligence). However, there are no current plans for a score release on this project, as Disney made a restrictive deal with Arista, excluding Penny and Hans.

Oscar push for Preacher's Wife - MV hoped that the chrome/non-dolby cassette that was sent out to Academy voters, did the trick for a best score in a musical/comedy.

PW was nominated! Ironically, we saw Hans pitted against Alan Menken! Up against it were:

The First Wives Club - Marc Shaiman

Emma - Rachael Portman

James And The Giant Peach - Randy Newman

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame - Alan Menken

Congratulations to Rachel Portman for winning.

The entire score runs for only 14 minutes on tape. The recorded quality is limited and restrictive in listenability. It consists of 7 tracks, including an extra 'Compilation'/Montage at the beginning which suggests that the original score is less than 12 minutes! Furthermore, the other tracks seem to be elongated commercial mixes as well. Talk about ironic! The Whitney Houston release only clocks in at 62 minutes - enough space for the ENTIRE score to be included; I reckon the fans would have put up with it being at the end of the album. Anyway, here's my analysis:

On first listen, it seemed to be a meld of The Lion King, I'll Do Anything, and Nine Months.
Basically it has three themes - the lovely 'Main Title'...slow, and used perfectly in the early quiet scene between Whitney and Courtney (on-screen husband); the 'Alleluia' chorus; and 'Dudley Appears', which is really bombastic (quick tempo)!
Okay, with the nomination of The Preacher's Wife for best musical/comedy score, it's time to treat you to Real Audio 3.0 stereo files of:

The score!!!

General introductory and past information available at home page.

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