Ghost Train Orchestra is a large ensemble based in Brooklyn and founded by Brian Carpenter in 2006. The group is known for their unique re-imaginings of under-appreciated and often obscure composers. They have recorded and performed extensively in NYC and beyond. They have released five albums, each one critically acclaimed for its originality and vision. In 2023, Ghost Train Orchestra released Songs and Symphoniques, a collaboration with the legendary Kronos Quartet reimagining the music of Louis Hardin aka Moondog, the NYC street performer and poet who wrote hundreds of beautiful and haunting madrigals and symphonies.

Known for leading various incarnations of his avant chamberesque folk-country outfit Beat Circus, Florida-born, Boston-based trumpeter , bandleader, composer, arranger, and singer/songwriter Brian Carpenter is also the principal driving force behind the Ghost Train Orchestra, restoring to life some of the most ebullient -- and oftentimes under-appreciated or even largely forgotten -- music of 20th century America.

A resident of the Boston area since 2001, Carpenter devoted considerable energy to the dark Americana of Beat Circus during the first decade of the new millennium, but increasingly focused more attention on his snappy Ghost Train ensemble, initially assembled in 2006 to perform at the 90th anniversary celebration of Arlington, Massachusetts Regent Theatre, an event for which he had been chosen as music director.

The Regent Theatre was originally established as a vaudeville house, and accordingly, Carpenter looked back to jazz of the vaudeville era -- specifically the late '20s prior to the emergence of the idiom's signature big-band sound during the following decade -- for musical inspiration in planning the Ghost Train performance at the venue. From original 78-rpm records, Carpenter meticulously transcribed the music of idiosyncratic early jazz bands and then gathered together a nine-piece group of Brooklyn-based musicians to play his own arrangements. Given the success of their Regent appearance, the Ghost Train Orchestra became far more than a one-off project, performing regularly in N.Y.C., including a monthly series of shows at Barbès in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood.

The nine-piece orchestra featured Beat Circus alumni tubist Ron Caswell, trombonist Curtis Hasselbring, and banjoist Brandon Seabrook, as well as multi-instrumentalist Matt Bauder, alto saxophonist Andy Laster, clarinetist Dennis Lichtman, drummer Rob Garcia, violinist Mazz Swift, and violist Jordan Voelker.

In November 2009, Ghost Train Orchestra recorded their debut album Hothouse Stomp at Avatar Studios in Manhattan with a nine-piece orchestra reimagining the rollicking music of 1920s Harlem and Chicago bands led by Tiny Parham, Charlie Johnson, Fess Williams, and Don Redman.

The debut record Hothouse Stomp was a veritable hit, racing to the Billboard Jazz charts and making many Top Ten Lists of the year, including NPR and a stint on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Carpenter kept the Ghost Train rolling, and for sophomore album Book of Rhapsodies, recorded in April 2012, extended the band's re-imagined repertoire from the '20s into the '30s and '40s. But rather than follow a thread into prevailing jazz styles of those two decades, the ensemble remained a vehicle for uncovering the quirky, the idiosyncratic, and the forgotten, as Carpenter transcribed and arranged odd and often highly complex (and high-spirited) compositions that truly transcended genre -- "chamber jazz" perhaps being the best stylistic box if such a box were needed.

Book of Rhapsodies found GTO expanded by a six-person choir reminiscent of the Swingle Singers and guitarist Avi Bortnick, violist Emily Bookwalter, and double bassist Michael Bates.

Carpenter revisited the hot jazz arrangements on Hot Town (2015), named one of the Top Ten Jazz Records of 2015 by NPR. Ghost Train Orchestra released a second volume of Carpenter’s chamber jazz arrangements on Book of Rhapsodies Vol II (2017), with the same 6-person choir and debuted live with the orchestra at Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2018.

Ghost Train Orchestra 2006-2016 biography by Dave Lynch for AllMusic

Starting in 2018, Ghost Train Orchestra began a years-long collaboration with the legendary Kronos Quartet, then approaching their 5th decade of performing. The two ensembles worked on reimagining the music of the NYC cult hero Louis Hardin aka Moondog, a great American composer who wrote hundreds of beautiful songs, madrigals, mini-symphonies, and canons.

For the Moondog project, Carpenter expanded the Ghost Train palette to include bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck, bassist Chris Lightcap, violinists Maxim Moston and Sara Caswell, violist Karen Waltuch, and cellist Alex Waterman. Carpenter also farmed out the arrangements to include arrangers Curtis Hasselbring, Andy Laster, Maxim Moston, and Matt Bauder.

Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog was recorded over a four year period (including the pandemic), released in 2023, and included several special guest vocalists including Joan as Police Woman, Karen Mantler, Marissa Nadler, Jarvis Cocker, Rufus Wainwright, Petra Haden, Sam Amidon, and Aoife O’Donovan.