Founded in 1992 in Northumberland by Stephen Sutton, the award-winning and critically acclaimed label group began when Stephen Sutton put together its first release for Divine Art Records (now on CD, DDV 24101) in order to raise funds for the restoration of the Walker organ at the famous 13th century village church of St. Mungo.
In 2003, Divine Art, Limited acquired the highly-regarded Athene label, specialising in period piano performances, and its sister label Athene-Minerva. For a time we also distributed other labels, such as Move Records of Australia but have discontinued this, except that we do currently offer the privately produced CDs of Peter Katin (RP Music) and Dan Evans (Dansing).
In April 2005. the new Divine Art Recordings Group launched the first in our new Historic Sound series, in partnership with Pristine Audio, leaders in sound restoration. Our next step was completed on 1 April 2007, when we proudly accepted the acclaimed Metier label into our family. Metier is renowned as among Europe’s most important labels for contemporary music, and as well as the existing 77 titles, a new series of releases began in May 2007 with over a hundred new releases so far. The label has drawn praise from many quarters for the quality of its productions and the innovation of programming, ideals which also underpin the divine art ethos. In April 2008, we added a further catalog, that of Dunelm Records; this label had always been available to special order only and all of its 200+ titles had to be deleted when Dunelm producer Jim Pattison died in 2013. Some of the best titles were transferred to our Diversions label and a few others listed for digital streaming. In 2009 we acquired Heritage Media Ltd, a producer of historic radio dramas, which was re-launched in 2010 with products both in digital and CD format; these vintage productions are finding a very enthusiastic new audience and are also being re-licensed to the BBC and broadcasters in several countries.
The company now has five main labels, Divine Art, Athene, Diversions, Métier, and Ekkozone, global distribution (since February 2013 as part of the Naxos Music Group), and an ever-increasing list of new projects, but the two founding principles remain: the company looks to produce recordings of rare and unusual music of quality, and to be artist-led.
In 2025, Divine Art Recordings Group was acquared by the US-based company, First Inversion, which also fully acquired the Ekkozone Records label from Danish musician, artist, and producer Mathias Reumert. The label will operate under First Inversion, in the UK under Divine Art Ltd, while each individual label, shall continue to operate in its own unique part of the music-sphere.
Divine Art is a member of British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) and the International Federation of the Phonograph Industry (IFPI).
