The 8-Bit Big Band’s Orchestrator Emulator Earns Two GRAMMY® Nominations
The 8-Bit Big Band’s ‘Orchestrator Emulator’ has been nominated for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album and Charlie Rosen, Bryan Carter and Matthew Whitaker’s “Super Mario Praise Break” has been nominated for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella at the 68th GRAMMY® Awards
Orchestrator Emulator, the fifth album from The 8-Bit Big Band, has earned two GRAMMY® nominations. The 8-Bit Big Band, the smashing jazz-pops orchestra dedicated to reimagining video game music through the lens of big band jazz, has earned its first-ever GRAMMY® nomination as a group for its acclaimed fifth album, Orchestrator Emulator in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category. Additionally, The 8-Bit Big Band founder and musical director, Charlie Rosen, is nominated alongside co-arrangers Bryan Carter and Matthew Whitaker for “Super Mario Praise Break” up for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella.
Released via Rosen’s TeamChuck records in July, Orchestrator Emulator showcases inventive, meticulously crafted arrangements performed by more than 75 of New York City’s finest musicians. The album expands the ensemble’s ambitious project of elevating the “great video game songbook” and into the realm of modern large-ensemble jazz. Having amassed nearly half a million social followers and millions of YouTube views, The 8-Bit Big Band continues to sell out venues across the globe, and earn praise from The New York Times, Forbes, and Jazziz, who wrote that the group “is redefining the concept of a modern big band.”
“Super Mario Praise Break,” represents the creative partnership at the heart of the project. Co-arranged by Charlie Rosen, Matthew Whitaker, and Bryan Carter, the piece is a joyful, gospel-inspired celebration of what the trio describes as the “sacred space video games have created for so many as a place of escape, of comfort, and of community.” Carter reflected that it was “a privilege to be nominated alongside such esteemed and gifted arrangers,” noting that the work offered “a rare opportunity to unite the timeless and iconic themes of video-game music with the majesty of gospel music—a creative dialogue between two beloved traditions.”
Rosen emphasized the collective spirit behind the ensemble nomination, describing the project as “an immense honor” that recognizes “the immense talent of 75+ deeply gifted actual live human beings from an incredibly wide array of upbringings and backgrounds.” He added that bringing this community of musicians together is “nothing more fulfilling or spiritually moving.”
For Whitaker, this marks his first GRAMMY® nomination. “I’ve always dreamed of working with The 8-Bit Big Band ever since I first heard them back in my senior year of high school,” he said. “To now be part of something that’s being recognized by the Recording Academy feels truly surreal.” Whitaker’s recent album On Their Shoulders: An Organ Tribute was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album, and he is a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award.
These nominations build on Rosen and Carter’s established creative partnership. Rosen previously won Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella at the 64th GRAMMYs for “Meta Knight’s Revenge,” co-arranged with Jake Silverman for The 8-Bit Big Band, and the duo earned a subsequent arrangement nomination for “Last Surprise” from the 8-Bit Big Band’s fourth album, Game Changer. Rosen and Carter also won a GRAMMY® together as co-orchestrators of the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Some Like It Hot, a project that earned Carter and Rosen a Tony Award for Best Orchestrations.
Orchestrator Emulator includes music from Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Metroid, Persona 5, Undertale, and the Super Mario Bros. universe. The album was arranged and produced by Rosen, mixed by GRAMMY-winning engineer John Kilgore, and mastered by Alan Silverman.
The 68th GRAMMY® Awards will take place on February 1, 2026.