Episode #174: Charlie Rosen

Episode #174: Charlie Rosen

From Improv Exchange Podcast by Leander Young

June 30, 2025 · 42 min · Episode 174

About this episode

Charlie Rosen discusses his innovative approach to music and composition, bridging genres and generations.

Rosen has been hailed by The New York Times as “insanely ambitious,” “a sort of bridge between genres and generations, embracing Broadway standards, pop songs and the music of Tetris.” Broadway World hailed his orchestrations for “Some Like it Hot” — co-written with Bryan Carter — as “explosive… another first-rate team.” Opined JazzTimes of the 8-Bit Big Band: “[These are] innovative spins on a hidden musical canon that’s arguably just booting up.” In 2021, Grammy.com proclaimed him to be one of “6 Big Band Composers Pushing The Format Forward.” Rosen was born in 1990 in Los Angeles, to a bassoonist and music teacher mother and pianist, banjoist, and silent movie theater organist father. When Rosen was three, his father ascertained that he had perfect pitch, when he successfully distinguished piano keys by color without seeing them. “That’s a black key, that’s a white key,” Rosen remembers intuiting. Rosen played flute in an elementary school orchestra, but that didn’t really take. “I played cello for a year. That didn’t really take,” Rosen says. But as his single digits flowed into his doubles, he accordingly took guitar lessons, and proceeded to perform in bands. “That was my…

People in this episode

Host: Leander Young

Guest: Charlie Rosen

Topics covered

  • music
  • Broadway
  • big band
  • jazz
  • composition
  • orchestration

Keywords

  • Charlie Rosen
  • big band
  • Broadway
  • jazz
  • orchestration
  • music composition
  • perfect pitch

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The New York Times, Broadway World, JazzTimes, Grammy.com

Places: Los Angeles

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