Brian Carpenter, composer and arranger, founded the Ghost Train Orchestra in 2006. Carpenter was appointed musical director in 2006 for an event celebrating the 90th anniversary the Boston’s Regent Theater. Five composers were chosen by Carpenter from a transitional period in America. They came from late 1920s Chicago, Harlem, where the jazz orchestra was being created by musicians like Tiny Parham and Fess Williams. Carpenter started transcribing parts from old 78s, and then arranged the music to support the performers on stage. The band performed at the Regent in a huge success. Since then, the band has been performing regularly in New York City. Carpenter composed the music, adding strings, vocals, and a musical saw to the arrangement. The band was recorded in New York City by Avatar Studios the next year with Danny Blume, an engineer/producer. Hothouse Stomp was the result of all this effort, and it was released by Accurate Records on November 11, 2011. Hothouse Stomp was praised by many and reached the top 10 on the Billboard Jazz charts within a few weeks of Carpenter’s appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air. The band performed at the Museum of Modern Art and the John F. Kennedy Center, Washington DC, as well as the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and NYC Winter JazzFest. Ghost Train Orchestra’s second Book of Rhapsodies has just been released. It features wild arrangements of “chamber music” from the 1930s. from http://ghosttrainorchestra.com
