Divine Art founder Stephen Sutton has from the age of 14 been a collector of vintage recordings, though the "78" was obsolete well before then.  The passion began with his parents' small collection and, in 1968, with a gift of two edited highlights sets of Gilbert & Sullivan. The collection has now grown to over 18,000 discs.   A long held ambition, once digital sound restoration software became affordable, was to start a series of historic recording re-issues, and by pure coincidence, in early 2005, Stephen was contacted by Andrew Rose, an ex-BBC engineer who had relocated to France and was setting up his company Pristine Audio, with the aim of providing the best possible audio restorations . Andrew was looking for a home for some existing projects and so the Divine Art "historic Sound" label was born.

Four years later there have only been 11 releases - partly because of the enormous demands which running their respective companies have placed on Andrew and Stephen, but also because this label also shares the Divine Art ethos:  to produce recordings which are not only of the highest possible quality but also of rare or unusual repertoire.  Simply releasing multitudes of CDs with recordings already familiar is not an option, though this may occur when our restoration is of such a quality that it far surpasses previous offerings.

Praise from critics and customers has flowed in for every CD.  The issue of the 1930 "Elijah" saw an award for "Best Choral CD of 2005" from Classic Record Collector Magazine and in 2006 the CD of Coates and Moeran Violin Concertos was a runner-up in the Concerto category.

Future releases, such as the recent Peter Warlock set, will occur when of sufficint interest and quality. Currently (2010) Stephen Sutton is working in the company's USA office so is parted from his UK-based collection for the time being!

As part of our Brandon Music complex we intend to open a small but fascinating working display of vintage phonographs in the spring of 2011.

mail:

Diversions LLC
(Brandon Music)
62 Country Club Road
Brandon, VT 05733