Tre Nagella

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2007, Tre Nagella played keyboards on Kirk Franklin's album The Fight of My Life. Two years later, he won a Grammy for engineering that same record. That arc from musician to engineer-of-record captures something essential about how Nagella works. He is an American audio engineer, mixer, and record producer, and his credits run across gospel, country, hip-hop, classical crossover, and film soundtracks. He has won four Grammy Awards. He has also pushed into territory that music producers had never occupied before. What makes a career range this far across genres and formats? And where does gospel fit at the center of a body of work that keeps expanding outward?

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• 2. A Foundation Built Backstage

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  Nagella started playing guitar in his teens. His high school's technical theater department became an equally important training ground. There he ran the audio for the school's orchestra, choir, jazz band, musicals, and dance concerts. Managing sound across that range of ensembles built a practical foundation for his later work. After high school, he enrolled at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts and graduated as Valedictorian with four Directors Awards. The earliest entry in his professional discography dates to 2006, when he handled vocal recording for Rhonda Smith's album RS2.

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• 3. The Kirk Franklin Partnership

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  Kirk Franklin's album Hello Fear earned Nagella a Grammy in 2012 for best gospel album mixing and engineering. Losing My Religion brought a third Grammy in the same category ten years later, in 2022. The consistency of that recognition across more than a decade reflects a long and trusted relationship. Nagella also engineered and mixed many records for Franklin's label, not only for Franklin himself. One of those was Fast Forward by the choral group The Walls Group, which earned a Grammy nomination of its own. The credits for Hello Fear list Nagella not only as engineer but as guitarist and drum programmer. His musicianship had not stayed at the door when he stepped into the control room.

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• 4. A Career Without Genre Walls

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  Ed Sheeran's Antisocial, released in 2019 and featuring Travis Scott, lists Nagella as vocal engineer. That pairing captures the breadth of his workload. Blake Shelton's 2015 compilation Reloaded: 20 Number 1 Hits carries his name as engineer, alongside Christina Aguilera's 2012 album Lotus. Pimp C's 2015 release Long Live the Pimp is also in the discography. The Hidden Figures soundtrack from 2016 and The Hate U Give film from 2018 extended Nagella's work into Hollywood. He also engineered the Greenleaf television series soundtrack in 2017 and the Joyful Noise film soundtrack from 2012.

  Nagella co-produced Kitt Wakeley's 2021 album Symphony of Sinners & Saints, a project that reached number one on Billboard's Classical Crossover and Classical charts. He has also written and produced music for advertising campaigns run by Apple, Samsung, Ford Motor Company, and Smirnoff Vodka. A more unusual project was forming alongside a choral group and a technology company.

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• 5. Betty's Notebook

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  Betty's Notebook is a 21-minute piece of programmable music. Nagella created it with the choral group Verdigris Ensemble and the technology company Async Art. When it was released, it became the first programmable music NFT, or non-fungible token, ever made. An NFT is a unique digital record that marks ownership of a digital work on a blockchain network. Making music programmable meant the work could change in real time. Listeners and collectors could interact with it, shifting the piece between different configurations. The project brought together Nagella's audio expertise, the choral texture of Verdigris Ensemble, and a technology platform designed for variable digital art. Betty's Notebook arrived in 2021. That same period saw Nagella deepening his roots in Dallas, Texas, where he had already opened his own recording studio.

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• 6. A Studio and a Stage

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  Luminous Sound Studios opened in Dallas, Texas, in 2019, giving Nagella a dedicated physical base for his production work. Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District inducted him into the Fine Arts Hall of Fame at its State and National Awards Ceremony in 2022. That honor connected his professional career to an educational community where he had already built a presence as a guest and panel speaker. He has also spoken at SXSW, The Recording Academy, Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts, and the Recording Connection. In 2025, he was announced as one of the remixers of the official theme for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, representing the Dallas area. The 2026 World Cup has not yet taken place. Nagella's work at Luminous Sound Studios will already have shaped a part of its sound.

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