Jon Stojan
Image credit: Teresa Jolie
Question: What happens when you let someone with Kitt Wakeley’s versatility produce a myriad of different genres in short span of time? Answer: More Grammy nominations, another Grammy win and more placements on Billboard magazine’s famed charts
In the last three years, Kitt has produced, recorded, or composed 4 Grammy nominated projects and he was an arranger on a 5th Grammy nominated album. To top it off, he nabbed another Grammy win in 2025 with friend Matt B and his wife Angela V. Benson for Best Global Album “ALKEBULAN II”.
Image credit: Teresa Jolie
As impressive as his second Grammy win was, it was equally impressive that he managed to garner nominations in three drastically different genres for 2025. Traditional Pop, Global Album and Classical genres. Kitt isn’t just a world class composer, recording artist and performer, he’s added elite producer to his resume.
Within the last two years, Kitt produced additional projects in genres such as Dance, Choral, Broadway, Rock, Jazz, Spoken Word and Americana. This included notable albums such as “A Love Song” and “Abstractions” by Grammy nominated artist, Noshir Mody, as well as Vahagn Stepanyan’s #5 Billboard Charting Jazz Album “A New Chapter” which had some of the biggest names in the jazz world like Dave Koz, Nathan East and Mark Lettieri. The varied playlist continues as he is listed as one of the producers on Chuck Leah’s Americana album “Lola Montana”, Matt B’s “ALKEBULAN” and Danaë Vlasse’s “Mythologies II”.
Image credit: Teresa Jolie
One of Kitt’s Grammy nominated projects was also a media darling for 2024. The traditional pop album featuring Broadway star and film actor, Aaron Lazar who was diagnosed with ALS. Kitt’s talents shined as he produced the Broadway history making album “Impossible Dream”, which included stars such as Josh Groban, Sting, Kristin Chenoweth, Neil Patrick Harris, Loren Allred, Lin-Manual Miranda, Kelli O’Hara and dozens of Broadway legends.
With all this momentum, you would think Kitt is ready to slow down and hit pause for a short period, but according to him, there’s no time for rest. He’s been recording his own album, “Seven Seasons” at Abbey Road Studios in London with the Royal Philharmonic and he’s slotted to produce 3 more projects for other artists in 2025. So, there’s no rest in the foreseeable future.
Image credit: Teresa Jolie
As for the new album, there’s already industry buzz about the quality of the project, his creativity with melodic lines, lush emotional strings, calls and responses, intricate string arpeggiations, and epic tone that he’s known for. Kitt’s compositions for Seven Seasons have hit a whole new level of genius.
When he hears quotes with such praise, he’s quick to point out that it takes a team of people who are much smarter than he is with a higher level of expertise to pull off major projects. “I’ve learned that over the years that I don’t have to do it all. I used to compose, arrange, be the copyist, do all the heavy lifting, promotion, social media, creating assets and micromanaging every detail throughout the final release. But when I bring in producers such as Starr Parodi and Jeff Fair with their expertise, or Patrick Conlon and Christina Giacona with their skillset, the details get easier to manage and the quality increases ten-fold. Adding multi-Grammy winning engineers like Eva Reistad or Tre Nagella and seeking out those who specialize in certain areas, allows me to be more creative and focus on the writing and vision of the music. It’s almost like being a CEO of a project, who still gets to be creative and focus on the details where I feel I bring the best value.” Commented Kitt.
Image credit: Teresa Jolie
Kitt continued, “I’ve also learned a lot about what not to do. I learned a lot of hard lessons. I’ve always been fortunate to work with ethical professionals who excelled at their craft. Unfortunately, this past year was a major challenge and emotional drain. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t know how to handle this at first and at times, I didn’t demonstrate myself as a good leader or with professional maturity. I had a co-producer that lacked a moral compass, humility, and skillset within the industry. As I look back, all the issues we had were my fault. I should have separated him from the project as soon as I saw the issues starting to surface. This impacted, not just me, but the team as a whole and the morale of the project. I’m better for it and know how I would proceed in the future.”
On a more positive note, not only is Kitt working on his own album, but he’s also helping produce a classical album for Allison Charney and a choral album with Patti Drennan and her daughter Emily Drennan. However, he hints that there are more projects on the horizon. He’s booked through 2026 for 2027 releases. More specifically, he references a project “String Symphony” which he boasts about the level of talent that will be in one ensemble.
Image credit: Teresa Jolie
It’ll be interesting to check in with Kitt in another year and gage how far he’s moved the needle. I don’t think anyone doubts that he will find success. Kitt has the Midas touch with everything he works on and there’s no reason to believe the trend won’t continue.