FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
As a response to steady demand and market increase for a variety of Faith-Based products and initiatives, the Sophia Institute announces the addition of music to its portfolio of offerings, with their newly launched Sophia Music Group. The first action taken by Sophia Music Group was to acquire the reputable Classical and Sacred Music recording label, De Montfort Music, including its associated label, AimHigher Recordings. With the acquisition of De Montfort comes the new recording entitled, “Sancta Nox: Christmas Matins from Bavaria,” by the Seminarians of Saint Peter in Wigratzbad, Germany, which will be released Tuesday, Sept 28, 2021, in time for Christmas.
Recorded at the breathtaking St. Magnus Abbey in Bad Schussenried, Germany, Sophia Music Group/De Montfort will make this special collection available with a state-of-the-art HD recording produced by Classical Music Industry’s premiere producer, Christopher Alder (Yo-Yo Ma, Andrea Bocelli, Lang Lang, Pavarotti, Monks of Norcia).
The acquisition gives Sophia Music Group a significant launch position in the recorded-music market with an upcoming roster of planned recordings which fit naturally within the rest of the Sophia family’s products and services. The anticipated result of the new arrangement and first Christmas recording will be a significantly enhanced international scope for the Sophia Institute, while De Montfort gains a significant new marketing resource and a forever home for all of its future releases. As part of the deal, Montfort founder Monica Fitzgibbons will remain as the Executive Producer of the music recordings for the foreseeable future.
Tom Allen, Vice President of Sophia Institute Press, had this to say of the new collaboration: “De Montfort Music is a phenomenal organization whose culture and product offerings are a perfect fit for our new music division. Their tireless commitment to authentically beautiful sacred music, recorded with the most state-of-the-art technology of our time, has helped their music reach across genres and cultures. We’re very excited to accompany De Montfort into a new phase of growth. What Monica and her team have achieved is phenomenal and utterly unique, and the combination of De Montfort and Sophia will now give artists and their songs a permanent home and route to the worldwide marketplace, both digitally and physically. We are thrilled for these new gems to be available through the Sophia family of brands.”
Monica Fitzgibbons said, “It seems providential that these recordings will now reside with Sophia, a home that both celebrates the integrity of the art form and has the capacity to release the music widely. There is so much more to be done in this space and in Sophia we found the right partner to carry De Montfort Music forward into the future. We were one of the very first indie labels to consistently top the charts of classical music, whose roots trace back to ancient times, and I am honored to now join the incredible team at Sophia.”
###
About Sophia Institute
Sophia Institute is a nonprofit institution that seeks to nurture the spiritual, moral, and cultural life of souls and to spread the Gospel of Christ in conformity with the authentic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Sophia Institute Press fulfills this mission by offering translations, reprints, and new publications that afford readers a rich source of the enduring wisdom of mankind. Sophia Institute also operates the popular online resource CatholicExchange.com. Catholic Exchange provides world daily Catholic content that helps readers grow in holiness and live lives consistent with the teachings of the Church. In 2013, Sophia Institute launched Sophia Institute for Teachers to renew and rebuild Catholic culture through service to Catholic education. With the goal of nurturing the spiritual, moral, and cultural life of souls, and an abiding respect for the role and work of teachers, we strive to provide materials and programs that are at once enlightening to the mind and ennobling to the heart; faithful and complete, as well as useful and practical. In the summer of 2021, Sophia Institute announced the addition of Sophia Music Group to its family, under which the newly acquired De Montfort Music will release future music recordings.
About De Montfort Music
Under the genre of traditional classical music, De Montfort specializes in chant, polyphony and all areas of sacred music with a concentration on singing orders and communities well-trained in this venerable repertoire. The label provides a unique storytelling approach to extraordinary audiovisual projects, often linking civilizations throughout the world to each other through music. Since its inception, the label has consistently launched several Billboard chart-topping albums which have been routinely crowned “Billboard’s #1 Classical Traditional recordings.”