Kristin Wilkinson: Her Nashville Track to String Arranging

March 1, 2025

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If there’s one thing Kristin Wilkinson’s decades-long musical life proves, it’s that self-confidence backed by a can-do attitude on the spur of the moment can be the basis for launching an entire career.

Wilkinson, a violist, composer, arranger, orchestrator, and longtime member of Local 257 (Nashville, TN), started on the violin but says she always had an interest in orchestration and arranging. “From my earliest years in music, I had a fascination with the sounds of different instruments,” she remembers. “As a kid playing a Mozart violin concerto, for example, for some crazy reason, I heard a vibraphone in my head. So, I condensed the accompaniment for vibes.”

Born in San Francisco, Wilkinson grew up mostly in Philadelphia. “Nobody else in my family was a musician or knew anything about music,” she says. “In public school, when they handed out instruments, the first thing I got was a flutophone, one of those old plastic wind instruments. I drove my family nuts because I wouldn’t stop playing it, even on car trips.”

Then, on the school bus, there was a girl who played violin. “I begged my parents for one, and that girl became my first violin teacher,” says Wilkinson.

As it happens, her father met a violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra. “My dad asked if he could bring me over for an assessment to see if there was any hope for me,” she laughs. “And he became my teacher. I studied with him through grade school and high school.”

Inner Harmony

Wilkinson was still on violin when she studied at Stanford University in California. Stanford was her first exposure to the bluegrass and country music scene. “My dad was a classical music snob,” she recalls with a chuckle. “Of course, we all heard rock music as kids, but I had never been exposed to any kind of country music.”

Nevertheless, Wilkinson was naturally drawn to many different kinds of music—and Northern California provided great opportunities to broaden her musical horizons.

“On Saturday nights I’d go to a fiddler’s meeting in San Jose, and several of my friends played in a bluegrass band on one of the Air Force bases nearby,” she says. “Once I heard that music, I was hooked. The minute I heard Western swing and bluegrass, and the way fiddles are used, I completely fell in love with it.”

Heading back east to continue her studies at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, Wilkinson says switching from violin to viola was an organic move. “Really, it was just easier to get into quartets and other chamber groups on viola,” she recalls. “Also, I was interested in listening to harmony and orchestration. As a violist, you’re seated more toward the middle of the stage and surrounded by all the sounds of the orchestra. The violin section sits farther away on the edge of the stage.”

She adds that the viola’s role in the orchestra also suits her style better. “The nature of viola parts means you’re contributing more to the inner harmonies.”

Scoring Gigs

Following a brief but very cold year in Syracuse, New York, playing fiddle and touring with the Buffalo Gals bluegrass band, Wilkinson ultimately relocated to Nashville to dive headlong into the country and bluegrass scene—and her first foray into professional arranging.

“When I first got to Nashville, there as a well-known record producer who would let all of us kids hang out at night and listen to him mix recordings,” she says. “He knew I played violin and viola, and he would show me the scores for the string tracks.” Wilkinson was fascinated and discovered it was something she needed to do with her life, so she set about learning how the process worked.

And then one day she was playing on a recording session when the producer approached her and asked if she was a string arranger. “I was so broke that I just automatically said yes, I can do that,” she laughs. “I went straight home and took a week to write three string charts, and they went well.”

Jumping on board with that first small success, Wilkinson says she went around to people she knew in the Nashville scene who had influence and started introducing herself as a string arranger.

“A producer hired me to arrange strings for a group called Alabama,” she says. “Those songs became big hits, and suddenly my phone started ringing.” And voila—or maybe viola—just like that, Wilkinson was an arranger.

Artistic Vision

After her big Alabama break, Wilkinson says she launched into a regular career as an arranger and orchestrator, working for a wide variety of artists in different genres. “Things started to feel more like an actual career trajectory, not just dumb luck.”

That trajectory has taken her to some impressive places and artist collaborations, including musical arrangements for Chris Stapleton and Alison Krauss of Local 257, Ben Folds, Regina Spektor, Bill Miller, Mary Stuart, and Brandi Carlile, among dozens of other top industry names in country, rock, and roots music.

She has also been the supervising arranger and orchestrator for the annual Country Music Awards (CMA) show. Along the way, she was nominated for a 2019 Grammy for her arrangement of Local 433 (Austin, TX) member Willie Nelson’s recording of “It Was a Very Good Year.”

She is also an accomplished composer of her own original music for film and television, including dozens of advertising jingles and TV show themes. Wilkinson was nominated in 2001 for a Golden Globe award for Best Original Score for the film adaption of All the Pretty Horses, and won an award for best score in 2003 at the Premiere Video Awards. On top of all this, she has served several terms on the board of governors for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).

Whether arranging or composing, Wilkinson says her mindset is the same: using the foundation of her classical training to bring a vision forward through the music, regardless of whether that vision is her own original composition or another artist’s.

“When working for another artist, I listen to their lyrics to understand what they’re trying to say. Likewise, when composing my own music for film or something visual, I try to absorb the filmmaker’s artistic vision and write music to further that,” she says.

Staying in the Mix

Along with arranging and composing, Wilkinson maintains an active and varied studio playing career in Nashville. “The ratio changes, but these days I spend about half my time playing and the other half writing,” she says. “Regardless of the workload, I try to concentrate on my playing because that’s a physical skill that could go away if I don’t play as much.”

To that end, she performs on a lot of her own arrangements when the situation is right. “It’s always fun to play my own charts and participate on both sides of the job,” she says.

Wilkinson also maintains a state-of-the-art boutique recording studio in Nashville. This provides her the flexibility to produce demos and finished tracks for top-call session players in the area, or to work remotely to create custom samples and sounds for clients around the world. She says it’s a natural offshoot of her arranging career and continued fascination with musical sounds.

An important component of Wilkinson’s life in music is the responsibility she feels to give back to those who are trying to follow in her footsteps. While younger musicians could (and should) have the same belief in their own abilities that she displayed early on, she adds that there are a number of practical ways to succeed in the industry.

“First, you can intern or study with someone who is actively working and busy. Make yourself useful; be around someone doing this for a living, and learn from them,” she says. Wilkinson has herself had a number of interns over the years. “I feel they’ve gained as much from me as I have from them.”

She also advocates investigating every possible opportunity to write. “If you have a local church orchestra, community band, or choir, write for whatever ensemble is available.” Writing for musical friends, she adds, is another option, as is going to a local music school and taking a class or writing for the students. “Really, just get yourself in any room where you can start writing. If you’re good, someone will hear it and recommend you for an opportunity.”

Wilkinson credits her early years when she was constantly playing around with the music and trying her hand at arranging for the bands that she played in. “In the end, you just start doing it. You have to be proactive.” The advent of electronics, she says, has certainly been a boon for budding arrangers.

Building Connections

The union has been a constant presence in Wilkinson’s musical development. “I first joined the Federation in the late 1970s, when I got to Nashville,” she says. “Even back then I understood that being a union member supports the whole ecosystem and helps keep wages high. Aside from negotiating contracts, if there’s a problem, the union will work to get us the money.”

And of course, she adds, there’s the AFM pension. “It’s a phenomenal plan. I work with younger people who sometimes don’t understand why they should be thinking about the future. They need to know that the union pension raises up the whole music community by giving longevity to a career. Who else is going to work on their behalf?”

The same protections apply, she says, for recording sessions. “If the union went away, the bottom would drop out. Is every musician going to negotiate individually with a record label? I doubt it.”

As with most busy musicians, Wilkinson says her nonworking time is just as important as the job. When not active in the studio, she plays tennis, paddleboards, and goes on hikes. She also spends time with her husband and fellow Local 257 member Larry Paxton, a bass player in Nashville’s legendary Grand Ole Opry staff band. “Larry is also a session musician and writes charts for the Opry,” says Wilkinson. “We work together quite a bit and have written charts and film scores together.”

As a freelancer, Wilkinson takes her downtime whenever she can—and that’s not always a regular thing, as important as it is. “Also, as an instrumentalist, it’s tough to take a week off of practicing. But having time away is important to rejuvenate and renew your enthusiasm,” she says.

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