Alfred Sacred was founded in 1989 when Morton Manus (late President of Alfred Music) decided to expand the Alfred School Choral Catalog. He first hired well-known school editors/writers Sally K. Albrecht and Jay Althouse to re-imagine the Alfred school choral catalog. Several months later, he asked well-known editor/writer Jean Anne Shafferman to create Alfred’s first church choral catalog. Veteran composer/arranger Anna Laura Page soon joined the team as the first editor of the Alfred Handbell catalog.

Writers in the catalog’s early years included Don Besig and Nancy Price, Eugene Butler, John Carter and Mary Kay Beall, William Cutter, Benjamin Harlan, Jerry Weseley Harris, Mark Hayes, Hal Hopson, Steve Kupferschmid, David Lantz, Michael Larkin, Robert Lau, John Leavitt, Patrick Liebergen, Joseph Martin, Anna Laura Page, Dave and Jean Perry, Ruth Elaine Schram, Carl Strommen, Douglas Wagner, and many more.

The 1990’s were a great period of expansion in church music publishing and Alfred Sacred rode the wave of that increase. Its first publications were modeled after Alfred Music’s highly successful “educational series” approach to its piano publications. The result was a catalog that served the comprehensive music ministry, with four levels of octavos for choirs “from the cradle to the grave” (and five levels of handbell publications). This was a rather novel approach within the mainline church publishing industry. Those “graded” publications are still alive in the catalog today.

Jubilate Music was founded in 2009 by music publisher/producer/writer Mark Cabaniss during his tenure as head of Word Music. Early in his time at Word, Mark saw the benefits for Word to reach out to the traditional, mainline church in addition to its offerings for the contemporary church. Accordingly, he founded Jubilate Music as an imprint of Word Music.

The first Jubilate Music publications were released in May, 2010 through summer reading sessions and its first national promotion, introducing Jubilate as “A New Voice in Sacred Music.”

The first release group of Jubilate Music publications contained an inaugural composition from Allen Pote appropriately titled “Jubilate Deo.”

Others represented in the premiere release from Jubilate were renowned composers Joel Raney, Mary McDonald, Ruth Elaine Schram, Lee Dengler, Joseph Martin, John Leavitt, Hal Hopson, Tom Fettke, Benjamin Harlan, David Schwoebel, David Lantz III, Tina English, and Cindy Berry. The public responded enthusiastically to the fresh offerings from these top-notch composers.  Accordingly, Jubilate experienced rapid and consistent growth.

After having met and become a close friend and associate of Morton and Iris Manus (the legendary early leaders of Alfred Music), Cabaniss was invited by the Manuses (along with Alfred's Ron Manus and then CMO Andrew Surmani) to join Alfred Music to lead their church music publishing division in early 2013. Having founded the Jubilate catalog, Cabaniss had a keen desire to bring it with him to Alfred. Therefore, an agreement was reached between Word Music (then owned by Warner Music Group) and Cabaniss for him to purchase Jubilate. The transaction was completed later in 2013 and Jubilate moved to Alfred, joining the Alfred Sacred catalog to complement and expand Alfred Music’s established sacred music publishing division.

H.W. Gray is by far the oldest publishing catalog in Jubilate Music Group, giving the Company its deepest roots in the music publishing industry. H.W. Gray had its beginnings in the 1890s, initially founded in New York City by H. Willard Gray as the American distributor for Novello & Company of London, England. In 1906, H. Willard Gray, then branch manager, began his own publishing schedule of new works under the H.W. Gray imprint in addition to maintaining the Novello distributorship for many more years. Gray eventually had to part ways with Novello due to the rapid growth of his own publishing enterprise. 

Leo Sowerby had a long and distinguished relationship with H.W. Gray creating new works, including the publication of his Canticle of the Sun, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946.

Also in the 1940s, H.W. Gray commissioned several late works of Arnold Schoenberg. H.W. Gray includes music by leading choral composers such as Howard Helvey, Rene Clausen, Virgil Thomson, Harold Friedell, Jane Marshall, Healey Willan, Daniel Gawthrop, Eleanor Daley, M. Thomas Cousins, and more. Classical and contemporary compositions that have become standards in choral literature are also found in the HWG catalog, such as Puccini’s Messa Di Gloria, Penderecki’s Stabat Mater, and modern choral classics including Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether (Harold Friedell/Percy Dearmer), My Shepherd Will Supply My Need (Virgil Thomson), Awake My Heart (Jane Marshall) and more.  The H.W. Gray organ catalog contains a wealth of gems, written by beloved composers/arrangers such as E. Power Biggs, Theron Kirk, Austin C. Lovelace, Hal H. Hopson, Virgil Fox, and many more.

 

 

These changes (along with the cooperation and blessing of Peaksware, Ron Manus, Andrew Surmani, and then Alfred COO Steven Raft) afforded Mark Cabaniss the opportunity to fulfill his career-long dream of owning a music publisher, and therefore purchase the sacred publishing division of Alfred Music which included Alfred Sacred, Alfred Handbell, Jubilate Music, H.W. Gray, Good Life Publications, and its other associated sacred (and various secular) copyrights. Jubilate Music Group, LLC then opened its doors on January 1, 2016. Based in Brentwood, Tennessee (a Nashville suburb), the Jubilate Music Group editorial, production, sales, promotion, business affairs, and administration team includes Liam Salziger, Ben Spicer, Sondra Tucker, Tina Lester, Amy Romano, Carol Vincent, Gwyneth Michel, Aaron Imbt, Jean Anne Shafferman, Lee Dengler, Susan Eernisse, Christopher Bowling, and Matthew Thomas.

 

In March, 2019, Jubilate Music Group acquired the Brodt Music catalog, adding yet more quality choral and instrumental publications to its family of music publishing catalogs. In November, 2019, Jubilate Music Group became the exclusive administrator of Navona Music (BMI) featuring the songs of Loonis McGlohon.

In July, 2022, Jubilate Music Group was favored with a special concert at Carnegie Hall (sponsored by True North Presents). The concert featured a 125-voice choir, full orchestra, narrators, and soloists with music published solely by JMG including two world premieres.

With thousands of copyrights contained in Jubilate Music Group, Jubilate is one of the largest sacred music print publishing houses in the United States. Through partnerships with international sub-publishers and digital delivery, Jubilate Music Group compositions are performed worldwide. We are proud to carry forth the substantial legacies of the catalogs we contain, while publishing exciting new works, offering a large body of creative work by some of the finest composers, arrangers, and authors of choral, keyboard, handbell, vocal, and instrumental music, past and present. We take our mission seriously, and pledge to carry it out day after day, and year after year:

“To create and provide innovative, diverse, and quality music resources; to meet the needs of our customers through thoughtful, caring, and efficient service; to champion the creative efforts of our contributors and to faithfully continue our tradition of excellence.”