Association, which has a mission (in part) to provide cabaret workshops to underprivileged NYC public school students. She also is on the Advisory Board of The Capital Cabaret Organization, promoting the art form of cabaret in our nations capital. On a personal level,, Kittredge loves reading historical fiction and philosophy, hiking, biking, watching golf, and drinking tequila and Jacques Torres chocolate (hot or cold!). She lives in New York City with her husband and their children.
NiteLife Exchange (NLE) asks Ann Kittredge (AK) Six Questions:
NLE: Your second album, Romantic Notions, drops on May 7, with a celebration to follow on May 14 at Birdland. How long was this project in the works? What was its genesis?
AK: Did you know that May 14 is National Dance Like a Chicken Day? I’m honored to share that day with such a distinguished holiday. The album release itself (on all streaming platforms) is on the day of the new moon, May 7.
Randy Klein, head of Jazzheads Music Group, pushed me back into the studio last year without a plan. LOL. My first album with him, reIMAGINE, was getting a lot of attention and streams and he wanted me to get more material out. It didn’t take long to choose a direction for the album. John Hoglund, who recently passed away, said my strength was “weaving a romantic narrative,” in his review of reIMAGINE, and I thought, ‘Yeah, is that true? Let’s explore that!”
NLE: About reIMAGINE: did making that debut CD then prime you with eagerness to produce the second?
AK: What primed me to produce Romantic Notions was knowing I had found an extraordinary creative team that brought reIMAGINE to life in a way I would never have dreamed, and wanting to push the 
boundaries a bit more with this next one. Recording is its own artform, and it has been a blast learning how to interpret music knowing our audience can only experience it with their ears.
NLE: On Romantic Notions you worked with musicians Christopher Denny, Rex Benincasa, Sean Harkness, Mary Ann McSweeney and Aaron Heick, plus the producers and tech people. What was most outstanding about this collaborative experience?
AK: These are the musicians that will be on stage with me on May 14. Jay Leonhart, Gary Oleyar, Yoed Nir and Alex Rybeck also brought their musical mastery to my album. From working-with-the-musicians perspective, these are all ridiculously talented people who walked into rehearsal ready to improve on my plans. In some instances, they were coming up with incredible ideas in the recording studio, and it was thrilling. Duff Harris (engineer at Eastside Sound) and Paul Rolnick (producer) worked on my first album together, and they are both at the top of their game, so once Chris and I, often in collaboration with Barry Kleinbort, worked out our arrangements, I was able to walk in to recording sessions worry-free. The best thing? Knowing everyone around me was invested and were making my ideas better.
NLE: Were there any downsides to collaborating? What advice would you give an artist who’s a newbie about making and releasing an album?
AK: I gotta ask, what downside? Maybe if I had chosen the wrong people, there would have been a downside, but with these musicians, plus the rest of my team (Paul Rolnick, Barry Kleinbort), I had the A-team. Sometimes it was a real intense session working out the kinks—none of these people were willing to settle–but I find this kind of work total fun! I think they do, too, which is why we blend so well together.
Advice to others: It’s better to do less with good people. Spend for the quality.
NLE: After leaving a successful theatrical career behind to raise a family, you returned—in cabaret, an art form you took by storm. How would you characterize this experience? Highs? Lows?
AK: The reception reIMAGINE got was unexpected, quite shocking, really. But I kind of got the bug to record from it. I learned a lot the 
first time around. Romantic Notions is a more thoughtfully curated album. It really stretched me creatively and there’s no character to hide behind, no production value to blame. These arrangements were created for this album, without any live-audience input. As a primarily-live-performance kind-of-gal, THIS was really novel. So, we had to dig deep and trust ourselves. And that was thrilling and scary and challenging.
NLE: As a firmly established artist with a blazing trail of success to date, what does the future hold? Where do you see yourself in the next year or two or beyond?
AK: Well, we have exciting news to share that I’m waiting to announce at our release show on May 14. So, if you want to know the fuller answer, you need to be there!!! It will kind of say it all. But may I also say, I just hope people get exposed to my music, and if they like it, I hope it creates many more opportunities to share my music with them.
