Cory Stillman
Persona 5 is often considered amongst the greatest video games of all time, and over a decade later, its legacy lives on not only through gamers still replaying through the adventures of Joker and friends, but also its incredible music, newly reimagined via the Persona 5 Special Big Band project, the brainchild of arranger and album producer Charlie Rosen, the Tony-winning composer/musician whose work as the frontman of the 8-Bit Big Band made him a natural fit for this unique endeavor of musical adaptation. After all, the band covered the song “Last Surprise” from Persona 5 in 2023, securing a Grammy nomination for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals.
“I think the best arrangements are inspired dramaturgically by some key component,” says Rosen. “All other decisions about that arrangement should be informed by storytelling.”
With that creative philosophy as his guiding light, it is no wonder that Rosen so effortlessly traverses the worlds of video games and musical theater. The Persona 5 Special Big Band album provided him with a particularly unique opportunity to expand these iconic pieces of music into original Jazz arrangements, maintaining the integrity of composer Shoji Meguro’s original work, while still innovating upon the soundtrack’s sonic palette.
“What an arranger does best is hear the unrealized potential in a composer’s original vision, and use our additional musical vocabulary to deepen the flavor of the song,” says Rosen.
Of course, Rosen’s works of adaptation have always been rooted in a genuine admiration for the source material. He describes himself as a big fan of Persona 5 and its soundtrack, and his arranging/producing work on this new album only further attests to the timelessness of the game and its music.
“The true great themes and soundtracks from these games stand the test of time, and now, 10 years into Persona 5, we can clearly see this will be one of those,” he says.
Check out our full conversation with Rosen below!
Hi Charlie! Persona 5 has a distinctive musical identity that blends jazz, funk, and contemporary sounds. How did your experience working on the game’s music inform your approach to the Persona 5 Special Big Band project, and how did you decide which elements of the original compositions to preserve or reinterpret?
This is a great question! It definitely was a balance here to maintain both the elements of the original soundtrack that make the music of Persona 5 so beloved, and to continue to communicate the vision of the original composers, while also utilizing all the new orchestral colors at our disposal to deepen and enhance the available textures that they provide to us. I would say that the concert had two approaches, which I would fluctuate between sometimes within a single arrangement. First, I had to imagine myself as an audience member. This is not hard to do because I am also a big fan of Persona 5 and its soundtrack, but what’s most important here is I’m coming to see an expanded Jazz arrangement of Persona 5, and even though I’m expecting some surprises about these arrangements, there are key elements of the songs that I simply must hear in order to be satisfied.
For example, the opening chords of “Beneath the Mask.” Once it’s been established that I will hear my favorite elements of the songs within the arrangement, then the second approach can be employed, in which we continue the surprise of the listener’s journey (the “Last Surprise,” if you will, sorry, couldn’t resist) by throwing in new elements that reveal a never-before-seen fork in the road on the journey of said arrangement. This fork in the road, metaphorically speaking, is a new scenic route that opens on the journey to the end of the song that wasn’t there in the original, but is still inspired by the original. It could be an instrumental solo section; it could be a brand new interlude, a brand new outro, or a complete shift in feel or groove drawing from other similar songs from outside of the Persona 5 world that clearly also inspired Shoji Meguro, the amazing composer, to write his Persona 5 music. What an arranger does best is hear the unrealized potential in a composer’s original vision, and use our additional musical vocabulary to deepen the flavor of the song.
Big-band arrangements require a careful balance between individual instrumental voices and the power of the full ensemble. What were some of the most interesting musical challenges you encountered when adapting the Persona 5 soundtrack for this format?
Indeed, the art of orchestration is much like cooking. Every additional instrument is another spice in your spice rack that you can throw into the stew, but if you use way too much of a particular spice, then suddenly you no longer can taste the actual heart of the dish, and only that one spice. For this show, I wanted to keep the overall journey of a 2.5-hour Persona 5 music set in mind and make sure we kept switching up the flavors throughout the listening experience. This can be done musically by making sure we’re always varying parameters of an arrangement over the course of the whole evening, and not just within a song, although we also consider the individual song’s journey as well. These parameters could include, but aren’t limited to: High notes and low notes, chords with many notes, chords with few notes or one note, loud notes and soft notes, how many instruments are playing at the same time, which instruments are playing together vs. solo, who is playing the melody, what a combination of two or three specific instruments sounds like playing together that is a unique sound to that combination, and then of course changing things like genre, time signature, and overall tempo.
The music of Persona 5 is closely tied to the game’s characters, atmosphere, and sense of rebellion. How did you translate those narrative and emotional qualities into a concert experience that could resonate with both longtime fans and listeners discovering the music for the first time?
This is a perfect example of a skill that I can draw from my musical theater experience into my arranging work in any other field that contains a narrative story to it, especially modern video games, which have deep character development and complex storylines. I think the best arrangements are inspired dramaturgically by some key component. All other decisions about that arrangement should be informed by storytelling. In the world of musical theater, it’s “What is going on emotionally in this moment that is compelling the character to sing? What is the deeper function of the lyrics they’re singing, and how can that be reflected instrumentally?” In the case of Persona 5, it’s important that the arrangements either be inspired by the character’s journey through the game, or at the very least mirror their general vibe and aura. Using that point of character as a jumping-off point justifies the choices made by the arranger.
What opportunities did the big-band format give you to explore the original soundtrack in new ways, and were there particular tracks that surprised you in terms of how they evolved through the arranging process?
I think this format lets you give the soundtrack the royal Hollywood treatment it deserves. The whole inspiration for me behind this concert came from the game’s story. From the moment you begin the game, you’re thrown into a casino attempting a daring escape after stealing a precious artifact. After that, the game flashes back, and you begin your journey bringing together a group of friends one by one who each have special skills to infiltrate metaphysical palaces and steal the artifacts within to defeat evil in the real world. Essentially, I realized Persona 5 is a very similar template to your classic Heist Movies like Ocean’s 11, and the original Ocean’s 11 starred Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin. That made it clear to me that this soundtrack could be greatly enhanced by a classic mid-century Hollywood and jazz film score-inspired sound. The opportunity to explore that is what this particular instrumentation gave us!
Video game music has increasingly found an audience beyond gaming, including concert halls and live performances. Why do you think the music of Persona 5 lends itself so well to reinterpretation, and what do you hope audiences take away from experiencing it in this new form?
We are currently in what I think is a golden era of video game music cover projects. I think it stems from the fact that we now have 45 years of amazing material to draw from, and there is a whole generation and a half of people that grew up listening to video game music either recreationally or just by playing the games. The true great themes and soundtracks from these games stand the test of time, and now, 10 years into Persona 5, we can clearly see this will be one of those. Jazz musicians have historically taken popular canons of work and reinterpreted them, just like we’re doing now. We are in an age of “The Great Video Game Songbook.” But the most important thing is: video games, film scores, pop music, classical…the genre doesn’t really matter. If the songs and melodies are good, it doesn’t matter where they came from. The tunes stand on their own two feet and deserve to be honored at the highest level by great musicians performing in great concert halls. That’s what this album represents.
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