BROOKSVILLE, FLA. — The Sisters of St. Thomas Aquinas, a community of young women religious founded in 2005, will release their debut album, “Lumen: Chants for Meditation,” on January 15, 2027. It is the first recording ever made inside St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel, the Gothic chapel the Sisters spent more than a decade building in Brooksville, Florida. They designed it themselves in CAD software on the proportions of Amiens Cathedral and installed 1870s stained glass rescued from closed churches in Germany and England.
For the Sisters, Gregorian chant is central to their formation. From her first months in the community, each Sister studies chant alongside Latin, philosophy, and theology, learning the ancient melodies of the sacred repertoire in the style of Solesmes, as an act of prayer. Short videos of their singing have drawn 10 million views on Instagram alone since 2024, introducing chant to a generation encountering it for the first time.
The program follows the liturgical year: Advent and Christmas, Holy Week and Easter, Corpus Christi, the Requiem Mass, and the night prayer of Compline. Alongside chant from the Liber Usualis, the Sisters sing three polyphonic works: Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Tenebrae responsory “Amicus meus” (1585), Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus,” and “Ave maris stella” from Pál Esterházy’s Harmonia Caelestis (1711), a setting the Sisters traditionally sing before Christmas Midnight Mass. The choir of fourteen young women sings every work on the album; Victoria’s Tenebrae music, written for the male choirs of his day, is heard here in women’s voices.
“Lumen” was recorded on July 25–26, 2025, by eleven-time Grammy Award winner Blanton Alspaugh and engineer Anastasia Lukina of Soundmirror, with mixing and mastering by Mark Donahue. The ensemble is directed by Mother Mary Theresa. The result offers Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony sung as living prayer: unhurried, luminous, and profoundly still.
The album takes its name from the Canticle of Simeon, sung each night at Compline: “Lumen ad revelationem gentium,” a light to the revelation of the Gentiles. The 24-page booklet includes full Latin texts with English translations and notes drawn from Dom Prosper Guéranger’s “The Liturgical Year” and Matthew Britt’s “The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal.”
“Lumen” will be distributed worldwide by PARMA Recordings in stereo and immersive Dolby Atmos. The CD is available for pre-order at sistersofaquinas.org.
Press materials and review copies: sistersofaquinas.org/press
Contact: Sister Mary Magdalene, CSTA — smmagdalene@qasonline.org — 352.232.1570
