Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman Celebrate GRAMMY® Nomination for “Last Surprise” from The 8-Bit Big Band’s Album Game Changer
“Last Surprise” is nominated for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals at the 67th GRAMMY® Awards
New York, NY – GRAMMY® winning arranging duo Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman are celebrating their second joint GRAMMY® nomination for their stirring arrangement of “Last Surprise” in the Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals category off of The 8-Bit Big Band’s late 2023 release Game Changer.
The 8-Bit Big Band’s fourth album, Game Changer continues to explore and expand the ever-growing contemporary body of music that they are calling “The Great Video Game Songbook”. This album features a symphonic Jazz orchestra of over 90 of New York City’s (and beyond!) finest musicians, arranged and produced by Charlie Rosen, mixed by the Grammy award-winning engineer John Kilgore, and mastered by the veteran Alan Silverman who has worked on more than 80 GRAMMY® nominated or winning albums.
The 67th annual GRAMMY® Awards will take place on February 2, 2025.
“I am so thrilled to be nominated once again alongside some truly incredible artists for my arranging work with The 8-Bit Big Band! The large ensemble Jazz flame is alive and well, and living in video game music! Huge thanks to my co-arranger Jake Silverman, and of course the original composer and songwriter of all the Persona franchise music, the great Shoji Meguro. The Great Video Game Songbook grows!” Charlie Rosen proudly proclaimed in a statement. Silverman, who goes by the moniker Button Masher, added: “I am deeply honored to have received another nomination from the recording academy alongside my good friend Charlie Rosen. I am looking forward to representing video game music at the Grammys for a second time this year.”
“Last Surprise” comes from the incredibly popular Sega/ATLUS video game release Persona 5 from their beloved “Persona” series. A widely popular game franchise that has an equally beloved soundtrack by fans of the games. This rearrangement from Rosen and Silverman adds a litany of contemporary Jazz fusion harmony and features singer-keyboardist-arranger-composer Jonah Nilsson of the band Dirty Loops.
Rosen and Silverman won their first GRAMMY® together in 2022 in the Best Arrangement, Instrumental, or A Capella category for their rendition of “Meta Knight’s Revenge” from Kirby Superstar. Rosen was nominated for two more GRAMMY Awards® in 2023 and 2024 in the Best Musical Theater Album category, for his contributions to A Strange Loop and Some Like It Hot, respectively, with the latter taking home the gold.
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 71 Million, and across their social media platforms have over 500,000 subscribers, followers, and listeners across the globe, with millions of streams per year on Spotify from 156 different countries.
At just 34 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. In addition to his two GRAMMY® Awards, Rosen has also won two Tony Awards.
Jake Silverman aka 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.
The 8-Big Band will be performing on December 7 at Berklee Performance Center in Boston, MA on December 27 at Sony Hall in New York City, and on February 7th at City Winery in Philadelphia.
Rosen and Silverman are proud to be nominated in this category alongside Cody Fry, Willow, Matt Jones and Erin Bentlage, Sara Gazarek, Johnnye Kendrick & Amanda Taylor.