8-Bit Big Band's Shocking Confession: Broadway, Grammys, & "Side Project"?!

I've always had a soft spot for Video game music. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's the sheer creativity packed into those 8-bit (and beyond) melodies. But finding legitimate, high-quality versions of some soundtracks, especially the older stuff, can be a real pain. That's where covers come in! And the internet is, thankfully, overflowing with them. Personally, I'm a sucker for jazzy takes. I've been listening to insaneintherain's saxophone-infused covers for years. So, stumbling upon The 8-Bit Big Band – a massive ensemble dedicated to crafting elaborate, big band arrangements of video game tunes – back in 2019 felt like striking gold. Then, when they snagged a Grammy in 2022 for their incredible rendition of Meta Knight's Revenge, I was ecstatic. It wasn't just a win for the band; it felt like a win for video game music as a whole, a genre often overlooked and underappreciated.

8-Bit Big Band's Shocking Confession: Broadway, Gr...

What truly blew my mind, though, was learning that the driving force behind this Grammy-winning project, Charlie Rosen, doesn't even consider it his main gig! "This still is, I guess, a side project," Rosen confessed during a recent Zoom chat. "Which seems reductive to say at this point, because it is very much part of my life in a big way. But it started out as a side project tangential to my main career, which is working on Broadway musicals and orchestrating them, arranging them, conducting them."

Funny enough, I unwittingly saw Rosen in action doing that "main job" back in the summer of 2019. Aside from jazz and Video game music, I'm also a Broadway buff. Rosen was playing guitar in the pit orchestra for *Be More Chill*, a show with music that he orchestrated and arranged. You can definitely hear the video game influence in that score (I mean, there's literally a song called "Two-Player Game"). But the full collision of Rosen's passions didn't happen until a trip to Japan.

Rosen was taking a shamisen and koto lesson in Tokyo when he spotted something unexpected. His instructor had a copy of *Ganbare Goemon* for the Nintendo 64 (known as *Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon* in the West). Now, that's not exactly a common sight, especially outside of Japan. But Rosen was a fan, and pointed it out. This led to him bonding with his teacher, Kazushi Okimasa, over their mutual love of video game music. Okimasa then gifted Rosen a copy of his band's album. That band, as it turns out, was Famikoto – a group that covers video game music using traditional Japanese instruments. Rosen was instantly hooked.

"I was listening to the album on the plane [home]," Rosen recalls. "I'm like, 'This is so cool. I want to record an album of video game music.'" The seed was planted, and in 2018, The 8-Bit Big Band released *Press Start*, their debut album. Rosen emphasizes that the project was born purely out of a love for the music. And while, of course, he hoped people would enjoy it, he was genuinely surprised by the band's rapid and widespread appeal, right from their very first shows.

"We did our first live show in 2018 in like, a 200-seat jazz club, maybe 150," he says, referring to the now-closed SubCulture in New York City. "We did two shows that night, and I remember being like, 'I don't know anybody here,' you know? I thought it..."