Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman Celebrate GRAMMY® Nomination for Arrangement “Meta Knight’s Revenge” on The 8-Bit Big Band’s Backwards Compatible
“Meta Knight’s Revenge” is nominated for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella at the 64th GRAMMY® Awards
New York, NY – The 8-Bit Big Band’s January 2021 release, Backwards Compatible has received a GRAMMY® Nomination for the song “Meta Knight’s Revenge” in the Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella category. The song was co-arranged by the 8-Bit Big Band’s Tony-nominated musical director Charlie Rosen and keyboardist Jake Silverman, also known as Button Masher. The 64th annual GRAMMY® Awards will take place on January 31, 2022 in Los Angeles.
Backwards Compatible explores the ever-growing video game music songbook with 13 imaginative renditions of video game music classics. The album was mixed by GRAMMY®-award winning engineer John Kilgore and mastered by engineering veteran Alan Silverman, who has worked on more than 80 GRAMMY® nominated or winning albums throughout his career. The stunning musicality throughout Backwards Compatible is sustained on “Meta Knight’s Revenge,” which comes from the video game Kirby Super Star.
“This nomination not only means the world to me as a professional arranger, but also represents an incredible victory for the ever growing body of musical work that is Video Game Music,” Rosen said in a statement. “We have taken another huge leap towards entering the mainstream musical world and are emerging as a legitimate canon of media and generation of music listeners.”
Rosen, who started The 8-Bit Big Band to pay tribute to and re-imagine some of his favorite themes and melodies, describes his collaboration with Silverman on “Meta Knight’s Revenge” as a thrilling ‘electronic Jazz Orchestra frenzy.’
“I am truly honored to have been nominated by the recording academy this year alongside Charlie and equally proud to be representing Video Game Music at the Grammys,” Silverman adds.
The 8-Bit Big Band has become a viral sensation since Rosen founded it in 2017 with features on NPR, the Boston Herald and Forbes, to name a few. Their fully produced music videos, regularly uploaded to their YouTube channel, have aggregated over 21 Million views, and across their social media platforms have over 250,000 subscribers, followers, and listeners across the globe, with over 500,000 listeners on Spotify from 156 different countries. The big band has sold out large-scale concert venues in New York City and Boston to date.
At just 30 years old, Charlie Rosen has 11 Broadway shows and countless Off-Broadway and regional productions under his belt. A man of many talents, Rosen has worn the musical hats of arranger, orchestrator, music director, pit musician, and music supervisor. Earlier this year, he received a Tony Award nomination for his orchestrating work on the Broadway production Moulin Rouge.
Jake Silverman, also known as Button Masher, is an electronic musician and keyboardist. His multi-media project Button Masher brings video game music and jazz music together and has received widespread recognition on social media from general audiences and jazz musicians. Button Masher extends retro video game music in the same way jazz builds on early popular music, including structured and improvised elements.