“We Have Millions of Mixing Notes. But We Don’t Care": Rose Peak’s Pursuit of Perfection
INTERVIEWS
By Olivia Lee
4/13/26
(From left to right): James Eberle, Aiden Chan, Marko Vidich, Andrew Atkinson of Rose Peak (Photo by Darya Kreymer).
If you played Rose Peak’s latest album, their sophomore effort Brothers, to someone who’s never heard their music before and asked them to guess the age of the band members, I guarantee you they’d guess 40+. And honestly, that isn’t a bad guess, considering the musical complexity and polished sound of the album. But the album wasn’t made by a bunch of 40 year olds...it was made by a group of college friends who, between lectures and exams, are already creating music that sounds decades beyond their years.
The innovative jazz-fusion band was born in late 2023, when members Packard Stephenson (bass), Aadithya Manoj (sax), Aiden Chan (percussion, drums), James Eberle (vocals, percussion, trumpet), and Marko Vidich (guitar) all met at University of Washington, with keys player Andrew Atkinson joining later this year. Their unique blend of jazz, blues, rock, funk, and literally like every genre out there has earned them an honorable reputation in the local scene; winning UW’s 2024 Battle of the Bands, touring the west coast, and participating in 2025’s More Music at the Moore program (where I first watched them perform) being some of the highlights of their impressive career thus far.
I had the honor of interviewing them at their record release show for Brothers back in March at Barboza. Read on to learn about their writing process for the new album, collaborating with other youth musicians, and...eating bugs.
On the inspirations for their new album
Marko: Well, we have a huge variety of influences. But I think the direction that we sort of took with this record versus the previous one…was we really wanted to take the energy that we bring to live performances and capture more of that in our playing. And we got much better, technically speaking, as players since the last album we recorded.
I also think that there's a much bigger kind of overarching jazz fusion influence. So all of us, to some degree, are influenced by that style. I take all my inspiration from the 60s and 70s era of jazz fusion. Mahavishnu Orchestra is like my biggest influence. That's where I get my ideas for just the energy and the compositions and the technical aspect of all the compositions and stuff like that.
James: Two of the biggest inspirations for this album; one was each other I guess, because it's a fusion of our different tastes and sounds and styles and ideas. And then the other one, obviously, it's like jazz and rock and blues and funk, so it all comes from Black American music.
Aiden: I mean, with my influence of modern jazz, I'm really listening to a lot of Yussef Dayes and Snarky Puppy and a little bit of Tom Misch every now and then. A lot of modern artists, Joshua Redman, a lot of jazz and all the contemporaries.
I've really been into Robert Glasper and Marquis Hill recently. But the last song on the album, “Seasons Change, The Root Remains Unbroken," that's my interpretation of a Yussef Dayes and Snarky Puppy song.
Aadithya: I think also beyond just musical inspiration and what genres and styles we all pull from I think as a collective, we learned a lot from just making the first record. We think about a lot of other intentionality that goes into everything we play. How is this going to sit in the recording? Every last thing that we play, everything that ends up on this record, why is it there and why is it important to the song? I think even more than the last record, we had a really good understanding of that when we made this one, and that's why I think it's so good.
(From left to right) James Eberle, Aadithya Manoj, and Marko Vidich of Rose Peak performing at Barboza (Photo by Olivia Lee).
On the songwriting process of Brothers
Packard: I think what I found for myself was when we're playing live, there's a lot of improvisation that everybody does, but I found that my role was less about being spontaneous and more about making a part that gives the song a certain feel that everybody else can do whatever they want on top of.
James: We don't usually record everything like a traditional jazz band where you record everything all at once. We do it in a more modern way for most stuff where we're layering things and doing as many tracks together as we can so we can have that live flow feel. But we also reserve the freedom to overdub solos or effects or synths or anything else in order to try to get the best mix.
Marko: Structurally, the music is very much a fusion of rock and jazz and we're utilizing that combination in a way I don't think it has been used in a very long time. Say 50, 55 years or something like that.
A lot of the time we have a form of an opera rock song. We have verses and choruses and that's mainly because we need a vehicle for James, our singer, to still have something while we have all these solos. It's a little bit harder for a singer to use their voice in the way an instrumental soloist might. So we take those elements that are traditionally found in rock or pop or blues and we are able to balance that with the improvisation and mix and bit form and all that kind of stuff.
Andrew: I think a lot of thinking outside of the box in terms of trying to craft a soundscape that both serves something that can be zoned over and something that sounds new but also something that is very reminiscent of the tradition and that can serve the workers.
On their musical growth
Aiden: Our first album, we were playing it safe. I can speak for drums because I'm a drummer. The first album, I was just thinking, "I'm going to hit 2 and 4."
Marko: Okay, don't underestimate yourself.
Aiden: No, this is true! No, that's what I did. On “Never Too Late” I'm just literally hitting 2 and 4 the whole time. But now with this new album, it's really less about how, not to say that it's completely removed, but it's less about “how can I serve this song?” and more about “how can I make this interesting as a listener?”
Sometimes that does mean I sit back and I play 2 and 4. But most of the time, that means, “I want to be more like this here,” or “I want to do something that's familiar, but not quite all the way familiar.” Just thinking about all the ways that we can make an album interesting while still keeping it our sound and making it enjoyable.
Packard: Hit the 1 and the 3.
Aiden: That's true, yeah.
Marko: There's a big difference between just making songs, and opening listeners' ears to things they've never heard before. I think one thing across this entire new album is that we're very intentional about everything. Because we want to just show people what can be achieved musically.
Packard: We also spent way more time on this album than we did the first one. I think that kind of shows up. The first one, it was a couple days in the recording studio and then we were just kind of done. But this time we got really lucky because we had our friend David (from Clover) who basically gave us unlimited access to a recording studio. So from June to a couple weeks ago, we were in the studio.
On youth community in music
Packard: I think it's really cool how we have met people of very different musical backgrounds that have managed to complement what we're doing and we managed to complement what they're doing. Like Clover for example. Totally different style of music, people from very different backgrounds but we get along so well with them and we're able to do a lot of shows with them. But it's like people of very different backgrounds can help each other out in ways that you would not have expected.
Marko: And we all push each other to achieve more interesting things. I think there's an element of challenge in some of the collaborations we do and maybe people might go into this thinking that if you're a pop singer you don't have to practice as hard or work as hard in the craft as an instrumental band. But that's just not the case. We found that we've all been pushed to work a little bit harder because of these collaborations. And it makes us better musicians at the end of the day.
Aiden: I think music especially is a very multi-faceted career, for lack of a better word in the sense that you have to be good at all sorts of things. You obviously have to be good at playing, but then you have to know a little bit about sound design, you have to know a little bit about how you get your merch out, how you're going to market yourself, how are you going to talk in front of a bunch of people. And no person is good at all of those things at once that a user needs to be. And I think that emphasizes even more so the importance of building a community. You support their weaknesses and they support your weaknesses. I think that's a value that it took me a little bit too long to realize. It's just the value of being friendly and having people that you can rely on.
Marko: Just having your friends come to your show, where maybe nobody's going to show up. It's a weeknight or so, and you can count on 10 people that you met at one thing that will come to your show and support you.
Packard Stephenson of Rose Peak and Rainbow Jackson performing at Barboza (Photo by Olivia Lee).
On what they’ll remember from Brothers after becoming famous rockstars
James: The journey, all the hours in the studio, and kind of all of the debates.
Andrew: I've never been in a band with so many mixing notes. So many re-dos, so much attention to detail, so much care put into this record. And I think you can definitely hear it in the record. Everything is perfect.
Marko: We have extraordinarily high standards because the music that we all are referencing, comparing it to, is some of the highest quality work I think ever made. by some of the most talented players either that exist or did exist in the past. And they were signed to a label, they had the most professional studio conditions imaginable. We're basically almost all students that are trying to do that with whatever free time we have. And so we have like millions of mixing notes and we don't care. We want to sound like them.
Packard: On a more heartwarming note, I'm going to remember all the time I spent with some of my best friends here. It was really, it was arduous work. It was always a pleasure getting to work with and spend time with these guys.
Aiden: I remember I got DoorDash for the first time in my life in the studio. I remember that. It was fried chicken. Everyone was watering over my chicken. This piece of chicken had been sitting in room temp for a couple hours and Packard came up to me and he's like, “Are you going to eat that piece of chicken?” I'm like, “Packard it's bad! You can't eat it, you're going to die.” And he's like, “You're lying. I'd still eat it. I'm like, what are you doing?”
Marko: I think his stomach would’ve handled it.
Aadithya: You eat bugs James, it’s ok.
James: There’s still people that eat bugs.
Aiden: If you’ve got the immune system for it and you’re ready to raw dog it out, then yeah.
(From left to right) James Eberle, Aadithya Manoj, and Marko Vidich of Rose Peak performing at Barboza (Photo by Darya Kreymer).
As I spoke with Rose Peak, it became increasingly clear that the sophistication of their music isn’t just a stylistic choice; it reflects a real-life maturity and humbleness that resonates both onstage and off. Seeing them perform afterwards was absolutely unreal; if there’s anything you take away from this interview, it’s that you need to see them live. Seriously.
For the annoying oldheads who complain that “jazz is dead” I say this: stop polishing your The Inner Mounting Flame vinyl and let Rose Peak open your mind. The kids are all right...and they’re playing jazz-fusion like you’ve never heard.
Listen to Brothers
