The Absolute Sound Profiles Divine Art!

“A Musical Heaven on Earth” is the subtitle of Stephen Estep’s new three-page profile of Divine Art Recordings Group in the May/June 2019 issue of The Absolute Sound Magazine – see it now!

Simonburn is a “small human settlement” in Northastern England, as Wikipedia phrases it. There is a church there named for St. Mungo, and in the early 1990s, its organ needed restoration..Stephen and Edna Sutton lived in Simonburn, and they are organist Henry Wallace recorded “Organ in the Hills” and released it on cassette as a fundraiser. The Suttons called their label Divine Art and continued it as a hobby after that first release, and Stephen eventually quit his job as a lawyer to run the label full time. Vacations to Vermont gave the Suttons a love for the area, and they moved there in the mid-2000s. The label’s headquarters are there now, and the Sutons run a small music store, a music and arts center, and a museum of vintage audio equipment, and two other shops. They have time to take a breath about once a week, and they sleep about every two months.

Divine Art Recordings Group actually consists of several labels, and this article hist some of the high-points of its 500-odd releases. There is Divine Art itself, and unless otherwise noted, the releases I discuss will be on that label. Métier’s focus is on new music, from the avant-garde to the neo-tonal. In 2003, Divine Art acquired Athene, a label founded mainly for early music and period instrument releases. Diversions boasts a lot of light music as well as some newer music. (The label also includes other sub-labels for 78-era recordings, radio dramas, and liturgical music.) Divine Art’s first LP just came out, with selections from Burkhard Schliessmann’s Chronological Chopin series originally on SACD. You can purchase physical releases and downloads (MP3 and FLAC) at divineartrecords.com…

See the full piece in the May/June 2019 The Absolute Sound issue and online!