Georgia Mass Choir

If hard-hitting, southern, Sunday morning singing style and dynamic versatility on signature traditional tunes like "Joy", "Come On In The Room", and "Sunday Morning Medley" have propelled the Georgia Mass Choir to the forefront of the Gospel choir scene inspiring crossover audiences, then it is projects like their newest release, They That Wait featuring Rev. Milton Biggham, Rev. Timothy Wright, Donald Malloy and the incomparable David Peaston that will keep them there.

Music that is as vocally sound as it is spiritually charged is the reason the Georgia Mass Choir has muscled its way to the top of the charts again and again. It is with that same choral force and versatility that the 16-year old choir beat out several distinguished New York and New Jersey-based choirs to land a plum role as the backup choir in Touchstone Pictures 1997 film, "The Preacher's Wife", starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. Daily News reporter Baird Jones reported in 1997 that "during the filming of 'The Preacher's Wife', Whitney and the Georgia Mass Choir would become so enraptured with their Gospel numbers, they would sing right through director Penny Marshall's cries of 'Cut!' Their leader, the Rev. Milton Biggham explained, 'We call that 'having church'."

Members of the Georgia Mass have been "having church" with a brand of spirited intensity captured in African-American churches throughout the country since Biggham founded the choir on January 29, 1983 in Macon, Georgia. Over 600 singers from Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Savannah, Thomasville and other Georgia cities turned out for the first rehearsal, though the number has since shrank to an average 150 voices. These days, the choir directed by Biggham with the help of Rev. Kenneth Paden who serves as minister of music, is intent upon becoming an institution through which others can experience success with the ministry and the music that the world has come to embrace as Gospel.

Reports Biggham, "The uniqueness of GMC lies in the simplicity of its members, who are ordinary people with a hunger and a thirst to praise God through the talents with which he has blessed them." Biggham, who serves a executive director of New York-based Savoy Records, which counts among its acts LaShun Pace and the Miami Mass Choir, says "Over the last sixteen years, the Georgia Mass has matured with the Gospel industry and hopes to carry the church tradition into the new millennium." Biggham also pastors Newark, New Jersey's Mount Vernon Baptist Church, and is an accomplished songwriter with over 300 compositions to his credit.