Biography
Brian Carpenter, a Florida native now residing in Boston who plays multiple instruments while serving as bandleader, composer, arranger, and singer/songwriter, heads assorted editions of his avant chamberesque folk-country ensemble Beat Circus yet also anchors the Ghost Train Orchestra. That ensemble revives some of the liveliest yet frequently overlooked or nearly erased music from early 20th-century America. Having lived in the Boston vicinity since 2001, the multifaceted Carpenter poured substantial effort into Beat Circus’s dark Americana throughout the 2000s before shifting greater emphasis to the brisk Ghost Train group, which he convened in 2006 for the Regent Theatre’s 90th-anniversary celebration in Arlington, Massachusetts—an occasion at which he had been appointed music director.
Because the Regent Theatre had opened as a vaudeville venue, Carpenter drew inspiration from vaudeville-era jazz, concentrating on the late 1920s before big-band jazz became dominant in the 1930s, when shaping the Ghost Train program for that hall. Working from original 78-rpm discs, he carefully notated pieces by distinctive early jazz ensembles and assembled a nine-piece Brooklyn collective to interpret his fresh arrangements. The Regent performance proved so successful that Ghost Train evolved into an ongoing ensemble, appearing regularly in New York City, among them a monthly residency at Barbès in Brooklyn’s Park Slope district.
In November 2009 the musicians tracked their first album at Manhattan’s Avatar Studios alongside co-producer and engineer Danny Blume. The personnel featured Carpenter on trumpet, harmonica, and vocals together with Dennis Lichtman on clarinet, Andy Laster on alto saxophone, Matt Bauder on tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, and clarinet, Curtis Hasselbring on trombone, Mazz Swift on violin and vocals, Jordan Voelker on viola and saw, Brandon Seabrook on banjo, Ron Caswell on tuba, and Rob Garcia on drums. Drawing exuberant material from McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Orchestra, Fess Williams’ Royal Flush Orchestra, and Tiny Parham & His Musicians, Hothouse Stomp: The Music of 1920s Chicago and Harlem appeared on Accurate Records—the imprint of Boston’s Either/Orchestra—in 2011 and earned widespread critical praise.
Carpenter sustained Ghost Train’s momentum; for the follow-up Book of Rhapsodies, captured chiefly at Brooklyn Recording Studios in April 2012 by Blume and Andy Taub and issued by Accurate in October 2013, he broadened the ensemble’s reimagined catalog from the 1920s into the 1930s and 1940s. Instead of tracing mainstream jazz currents of those decades, the group continued to spotlight the eccentric, the singular, and the neglected, as Carpenter transcribed and arranged unconventional, frequently intricate, and high-spirited works—best described, if a label were required, as chamber jazz—by four composers of that period: Raymond Scott, Charlie Shavers, Reginald Foresythe, and Alec Wilder. Among the latter’s singular jazz-classical hybrids featured on Book of Rhapsodies were “It’s Silk, Feel It!” and “Dance Man Buys a Farm,” both performed with the seven-member Book of Rhapsodies Choir, including baritone vocalist Carpenter, producing a texture that recalled the Swingle Singers, although Carpenter observed in an All About Jazz interview that Wilder had fashioned wordless vocals in a comparable style several decades earlier than that vocal pop ensemble’s 1960s recordings. The core instrumental roster for Book of Rhapsodies had grown to eleven players, with Carpenter, Lichtman, Laster, Hasselbring, Swift, Caswell, and Garcia now joined by guitarist Avi Bortnick, whom Carpenter had first encountered during his Florida years before relocating to Boston, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Petr Cancura, violist Tanya Kalmanovitch, and double bassist Michael Bates.
Carpenter’s stockpile of scores prepared before the Hothouse Stomp sessions proved abundant, and several transcriptions and arrangements slated for possible inclusion on the 2011 release ultimately remained unused, prompting the bandleader to return to the same late-1920s early jazz terrain first surveyed on Hothouse for Ghost Train’s third album. Recorded primarily in September 2013 by Taub at Brooklyn Recording Studios, the same site used for Book of Rhapsodies the previous year, and released by Accurate in May 2015, Hot Town revisited the music of Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Orchestra, Fess Williams’ Royal Flush Orchestra, and Tiny Parham & His Musicians while also presenting two Carpenter arrangements of pieces originally co-written by Cecil Scott and Don Frye for Scott’s Bright Boys, one of Harlem’s most popular outfits around 1929–1930. Besides Carpenter, the Hot Town lineup reunited Lichtman, Laster, Cancura, Hasselbring, Swift, Caswell, Garcia, and Voelker, together with newcomer Cynthia Sayer on plectrum banjo. Beat Circus’s Andrew Stern contributed tenor banjo on two selections, and bass-saxophone master Colin Stetson appeared on three tracks.
Further material from the April 2012 Book of Rhapsodies sessions at Brooklyn Recording Studios remained, leading the ensemble to reconvene at the same studio in April 2015 to record Book of Rhapsodies, Vol. 2. Raymond Scott, Reginald Foresythe, and Alec Wilder again supplied featured compositions, and the album incorporated several Carpenter transcriptions and revisions of rare original arrangements by the late Hal Herzon, a 1930s big-band reed player who, before abandoning music in the 1950s, documented a quirky septet at his own Hollywood studio. The Ghost Train Orchestra—now comprising Carpenter, Lichtman, Cancura, Swift, Hasselbring, Caswell, Bortnick, Garcia, and Bates along with alto saxophonist/flutist Ben Kono, violist Emily Bookwalter, and violinist Evan Price, with guest appearances by Gita Drummond on voice and Rob Reich on accordion—performed alongside the Book of Rhapsodies Adult Choir and the Book of Rhapsodies Children’s Choir. Accurate Records issued Book of Rhapsodies, Vol. 2 in November 2017.
Because the Regent Theatre had opened as a vaudeville venue, Carpenter drew inspiration from vaudeville-era jazz, concentrating on the late 1920s before big-band jazz became dominant in the 1930s, when shaping the Ghost Train program for that hall. Working from original 78-rpm discs, he carefully notated pieces by distinctive early jazz ensembles and assembled a nine-piece Brooklyn collective to interpret his fresh arrangements. The Regent performance proved so successful that Ghost Train evolved into an ongoing ensemble, appearing regularly in New York City, among them a monthly residency at Barbès in Brooklyn’s Park Slope district.
In November 2009 the musicians tracked their first album at Manhattan’s Avatar Studios alongside co-producer and engineer Danny Blume. The personnel featured Carpenter on trumpet, harmonica, and vocals together with Dennis Lichtman on clarinet, Andy Laster on alto saxophone, Matt Bauder on tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, and clarinet, Curtis Hasselbring on trombone, Mazz Swift on violin and vocals, Jordan Voelker on viola and saw, Brandon Seabrook on banjo, Ron Caswell on tuba, and Rob Garcia on drums. Drawing exuberant material from McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Orchestra, Fess Williams’ Royal Flush Orchestra, and Tiny Parham & His Musicians, Hothouse Stomp: The Music of 1920s Chicago and Harlem appeared on Accurate Records—the imprint of Boston’s Either/Orchestra—in 2011 and earned widespread critical praise.
Carpenter sustained Ghost Train’s momentum; for the follow-up Book of Rhapsodies, captured chiefly at Brooklyn Recording Studios in April 2012 by Blume and Andy Taub and issued by Accurate in October 2013, he broadened the ensemble’s reimagined catalog from the 1920s into the 1930s and 1940s. Instead of tracing mainstream jazz currents of those decades, the group continued to spotlight the eccentric, the singular, and the neglected, as Carpenter transcribed and arranged unconventional, frequently intricate, and high-spirited works—best described, if a label were required, as chamber jazz—by four composers of that period: Raymond Scott, Charlie Shavers, Reginald Foresythe, and Alec Wilder. Among the latter’s singular jazz-classical hybrids featured on Book of Rhapsodies were “It’s Silk, Feel It!” and “Dance Man Buys a Farm,” both performed with the seven-member Book of Rhapsodies Choir, including baritone vocalist Carpenter, producing a texture that recalled the Swingle Singers, although Carpenter observed in an All About Jazz interview that Wilder had fashioned wordless vocals in a comparable style several decades earlier than that vocal pop ensemble’s 1960s recordings. The core instrumental roster for Book of Rhapsodies had grown to eleven players, with Carpenter, Lichtman, Laster, Hasselbring, Swift, Caswell, and Garcia now joined by guitarist Avi Bortnick, whom Carpenter had first encountered during his Florida years before relocating to Boston, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Petr Cancura, violist Tanya Kalmanovitch, and double bassist Michael Bates.
Carpenter’s stockpile of scores prepared before the Hothouse Stomp sessions proved abundant, and several transcriptions and arrangements slated for possible inclusion on the 2011 release ultimately remained unused, prompting the bandleader to return to the same late-1920s early jazz terrain first surveyed on Hothouse for Ghost Train’s third album. Recorded primarily in September 2013 by Taub at Brooklyn Recording Studios, the same site used for Book of Rhapsodies the previous year, and released by Accurate in May 2015, Hot Town revisited the music of Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Orchestra, Fess Williams’ Royal Flush Orchestra, and Tiny Parham & His Musicians while also presenting two Carpenter arrangements of pieces originally co-written by Cecil Scott and Don Frye for Scott’s Bright Boys, one of Harlem’s most popular outfits around 1929–1930. Besides Carpenter, the Hot Town lineup reunited Lichtman, Laster, Cancura, Hasselbring, Swift, Caswell, Garcia, and Voelker, together with newcomer Cynthia Sayer on plectrum banjo. Beat Circus’s Andrew Stern contributed tenor banjo on two selections, and bass-saxophone master Colin Stetson appeared on three tracks.
Further material from the April 2012 Book of Rhapsodies sessions at Brooklyn Recording Studios remained, leading the ensemble to reconvene at the same studio in April 2015 to record Book of Rhapsodies, Vol. 2. Raymond Scott, Reginald Foresythe, and Alec Wilder again supplied featured compositions, and the album incorporated several Carpenter transcriptions and revisions of rare original arrangements by the late Hal Herzon, a 1930s big-band reed player who, before abandoning music in the 1950s, documented a quirky septet at his own Hollywood studio. The Ghost Train Orchestra—now comprising Carpenter, Lichtman, Cancura, Swift, Hasselbring, Caswell, Bortnick, Garcia, and Bates along with alto saxophonist/flutist Ben Kono, violist Emily Bookwalter, and violinist Evan Price, with guest appearances by Gita Drummond on voice and Rob Reich on accordion—performed alongside the Book of Rhapsodies Adult Choir and the Book of Rhapsodies Children’s Choir. Accurate Records issued Book of Rhapsodies, Vol. 2 in November 2017.
Albums
