Artist Profile: Rosen Takes the Stage

On the opening night of Buff Street on the Hill (a concert series partially funded and put on by CU Student Government) summer was still lingering around, attached to the spirits of college kids not yet ready to face the forthcoming mid-semester blues. As the stage was assembled and mic tests began to boom out of speakers, curiosity peaked in the restaurant-goers waiting for their burgers across the street. Was their meal coming with fries and a free show?

Rosen was the performer that night; he was set to hit the stage on a college crowded corner where many of his friends and peers would soon file into the scene.

“It was my favorite show of the year, so far,” he said fondly with a smile. “It was my first time playing under the name ‘Rosen’ without my usual band. I remember everyone out there was dancing along and having fun, and that is really the goal of it all,”

Will Rosenthal—a musician, friend, and fellow student at the University of Colorado Boulder— walked into my house Thursday afternoon for an interview as breezily as the air in the October day behind him. He dressed casually in jeans and a sweatshirt with a demeanor to match. Being around Rosenthal is always comfortable and easy, but with the conversation set to talk about music, it was thirty minutes that felt like ten. Thirty minutes where he opened up the door to his world and invited us all to take a piece home.

Many artists describe the thrill of performing as one of the biggest rushes in the world—the performer high if you will. Rosenthal describes being on stage as a, “moment where time is no longer a thing.” It is music thundering into a lifeform of its own, and it is the people in the crowd, flushed with smiles, dancing knowingly along.

“I just want to make people dance,” he said. In the past months, Rosenthal and his band, Mr. Mota (composed of himself, Brendan Lamb, Max Lehrman, and Ari Lehrman—also students here at CU) have had the chance to play many different venues: backyard parties around Boulder, house gigs in Denver and Colorado Springs and now at events at the Fox Theater. Each a place where dancing is bountiful.

Rosenthal is actively choosing to dive headfirst into the uncharted waters of sharing art with the world. So far, his courage to release original music has not been met with failure. His first song has had over 100,000 streams on Spotify—which is no small feat for an emerging artist. This November, he looks forward to opening up for the band “Peach Tree Rascals” at the University Memorial Center, all while working on the release of his first album.

This is a whirlwind of activity for a kid also trying to balance schoolwork and a social life. “It can be tough trying to pull everything together and make time,” he said. “But I just want to keep putting out music and see where it may go.”

So, how did Will Rosenthal become the talented artist he is now, and where may his future take him?

Rosenthal’s household growing up was a garden for creativity. His mother, Kerri Rosenthal, brought art into Rosenthal’s life through her abstract painting and clothing brand. Her artistic influence in the house set a firm foundation to lean on and grow from. But it was his father that brought home the guitar. Rosenthal recalls memories of being as young as a toddler in diapers and reaching for the then giant instrument like it was his golden ticket. Little hands yearning to play the strings.

As time went on, interest turned into lessons. Gino, Rosenthal’s high school radio teacher, gave him his first ever guitar lessons which started out on the ukulele. He soon switched over to a man named Chris Russo, who is based out of his home state of Connecticut. As described by Rosenthal, Russo “is the godliest guitar player,” and he taught Rosenthal the skills he needed to grow an ear for music—an ear that allows him to genuinely hear notes and rhythm and be able to play songs from there.

Fast forward through more years of lessons and expanding musical talent, and we land with Rosenthal in college at CU. College allows you the freedom to discover what it is you want to create—how you want to spend your new-found freedom—but it can also dig you into a hole of being “too busy.”

I asked Rosenthal about the transition from growing up learning an instrument, to navigating what music meant as his life starts to get more occupied. He sighed and said, “finding the time can be a struggle. When I first came to Boulder, I was just starting school and in the process of joining a fraternity, so there was no time for music. Then right when I felt like my schedule was opening up again, Covid happened.”

Though Covid felt like a never-ending doomsday, we have it to thank for the emergence of Rosenthal’s first three songs—Take A Sip, Can’t Complain, and Mr. Insight (respectively). During a time when the outside world was closing itself off, Rosenthal fortunately had the natural reflex of turning inward into creativity. Songwriting—and later recording—became a way to productively brighten the days. With his learned ear, songwriting for Rosenthal evolves from him hearing the music and relaying it on the guitar in a way that feels as natural as forming a sentence. Looking to influences while writing like Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, and The Grateful Dead. He casually laughed when explaining his method, saying that “it is usually all pretty random. Sometimes it is even my buddies and me up late, looking at each other and thinking, ‘screw it, let’s write a song.’ But once the melody comes, I can run from there.”

Before quarantine, Rosenthal admitted to having had almost ten songs under his belt that he wrote and left to gather dust, tucked away somewhere. One day—of those many long and lonesome quarantine days—Rosenthal decided that the shelf was no longer the last stop for his songs. He was going to do something with them.

There is another whole, slightly daunting, side of deciding to record and release songs that may not occur to the common guitar player and songwriter—singing those songs.

While Rosenthal is a natural guitar player, he opened up about feeling much more vulnerable recording his voice for his first song, Take A Sip.

“There came a point where I realized that I would much rather sing without caring about how I sound or what people may think, there are a lot of bands that I look up to, like Phish, who don’t have great voices, but they know notes and it just doesn’t matter,” he said.

When you love music in the furious way that Rosenthal does, it is about being able to have the courage to get up and put yourself out there, and then the rest does not matter.

He adds that when performing on stage, “everyone up there is connected; we know what is coming next, we know what is going to be a hit, and it literally is the best feeling.”

Rosenthal is a college student who has found something through his music that makes everything else in life seem worth working for. Like many of us, he has to think about the current reality in some areas, “I’m studying finance in school right now, because I grew up around New York City in that business-type in environment and it felt like the right major to choose, but I can’t ever imagine a time where I will give up my music,” he said.

So often our dreams can become our reality and the next step in that journey for Rosenthal is the upcoming album he is producing. As of now there is not a set release date, but he assures that should be sooner rather than later. The release means more moments on stage where he can do what he loves and connect the crowd through music.

“I have been sitting on this album for so long,” he said. “I can’t wait to let everyone dance to it soon.”