About

Sacred Black Records is a classical music label and publisher that connects audiences with world-class musicians through high-resolution sound recordings, videos, and publications. Guitarist, composer, and producer Matthew Cochran founded Sacred Black in 2024. The label’s first releases include guitar duo Cochran & McAllister’s tribute to Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot; pianist Kara Huber’s Piano Works of Joan Tower; guitarist/composer Kim Perlak's Spaces, featuring percussionist Francisco Mela; and Stephen Mattingly’s ambitious solo guitar project, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Upcoming projects include Icelandic guitarist Svanur Vilbergsson's Guitar Music of Iceland, Volume One, and Singularities, featuring the works of Michigan-based composer Thomas Childs. Sacred Black Records partners with Interlochen Public Radio's Classical IPR to share exclusive content of upcoming projects. Sacred Black Records was founded on the belief that composers, performers, and audio engineers play equal roles in creating high-quality recorded music. Sacred Black invites world-class composers and performers to imagine their ideal project and collaborates with artists at every step to deliver it to listeners.

What We Believe:

Classical music is a living art form that is constantly evolving to reflect the world around us.

Classical musicians are highly skilled artists who devote thousands of hours to training and practice. These artists deserve to be heard, and they deserve to be paid.

Classical musicians often have to navigate a tangled maze of professional intermediaries, all of whom seem intent on separating creatives from any income their creation generates. Sacred Black Records splits expenses and profits from all products and services 50/50 between the organization and the artists it supports. 

What's With the Name?

The very first record released on the Sacred Black label was Cochran & McAllister's Pale Blue Dot. That project was profoundly influenced by the writings of astronomer, planetary scientist, and scientific advocate Carl Sagan, who described the black of space as "sacred." Sagan argued that understanding the tiny planet we live on, its unremarkable place in the solar system around which we orbit, contained within the insignificant galaxy we occupy, existing in the corner of the particular universe we inhabit is, in fact, a noble pursuit: 

"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works--that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it." -Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot 

Likewise, Sacred Black Records believes that it does no harm to the romance of art to know a little bit about how it's made and to support the art of music and its creators, whenever and however we can.