Ghost Train Orchestra

Last updated
Ghost Train Orchestra
Ghost Train Orchestra and choir in NYC, 2018.jpg
Ghost Train Orchestra with choir at Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2018
Background information
Origin Brooklyn, New York, United States
Genres Jazz
Classical
Avant-garde jazz
Years active2006present
Members Brian Carpenter
Matt Bauder
Ron Caswell
Rob Garcia
Curtis Hasselbring
Andy Laster
Dennis Lichtman
Mazz Swift
Emily Bookwalter
Avi Bortnick
Brandon Seabrook
Michael Bates

Ghost Train Orchestra is a Brooklyn-based jazz and chamber ensemble led by Boston-based musician Brian Carpenter. The band formed in 2006 when an historic theater in Boston commissioned Carpenter as musical director for its 90th year celebration. For the commission, Carpenter transcribed and arranged a set of overlooked music from late 1920s Chicago and Harlem and formed a side project from his regular band Beat Circus to perform it. The following year the group started performing under the name Ghost Train Orchestra.

Contents

The band first recorded in 2009 at Avatar Studios in Manhattan and released Hothouse Stomp in 2011 on Accurate Records. [1] [2] [3] The album featured Carpenter's rearrangements and often avant-garde treatments of early jazz from the 1920s and 1930s, drawn from recordings by such artists as Tiny Parham, Charlie Johnson, Fess Williams, and McKinney's Cotton Pickers.

GTO's 2013 album, Book of Rhapsodies, featured chamber-jazz works from the 1930s and '40s culled from found 78s and rediscoveries by music historians and collectors such as Mitchell Kaba and Irwin Chusid. [4] [5] The album included compositions by Raymond Scott, Reginald Foresythe, John Kirby, and Alec Wilder.

GTO's next album, Hot Town, issued in 2015, contained more arrangements and reimaginings by Carpenter of 1920s and '30s vintage jazz. Book of Rhapsodies Vol. II, issued in 2017, featured more works by Scott, Foresythe, and Wilder.

In 2023, GTO collaborated with Kronos Quartet on the album Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog . [6] [7]

Members

Note: Personnel has changed from project to project

Discography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moondog</span> American composer, performer, and instrument maker (1916–1999)

Louis Thomas Hardin, known professionally as Moondog, was an American composer, musician, performer, music theoretician, poet and inventor of musical instruments. Largely self-taught as a composer, his prolific work widely drew inspiration from jazz, classical, Native American music which he had become familiar with as a child, and Latin American music. His strongly rhythmic, contrapuntal pieces and arrangements later influenced composers of minimal music, in particular American composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aulis Sallinen</span> Finnish composer of contemporary classical music

Aulis Heikki Sallinen is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. His music has been variously described as "remorselessly harsh", a "beautifully crafted amalgam of several 20th-century styles", and "neo-romantic". Sallinen studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen. He has had works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and has also written seven operas, eight symphonies, concertos for violin, cello, flute, horn, and English horn, as well as several chamber works. He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1978 for his opera Ratsumies.

<i>La création du monde</i> Ballet by Darius Milhaud

La Création du monde, Op. 81a, is a 15-minute-long ballet composed by Darius Milhaud in 1922–23 to a libretto by Blaise Cendrars, which outlines the creation of the world based on African folk mythology. The premiere took place on 25 October 1923 at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billy Childs</span> American jazz pianist, arranger and conductor (born 1957)

William Edward Childs is an American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor from Los Angeles, California, United States.

The Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year has been awarded since 1977, as recognition each year for the best classical music album in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avi Bortnick</span> American jazz guitarist

Avi Bortnick is an American guitarist who became more widely known after his association with jazz guitarist John Scofield. Bortnick joined Scofield's jam-oriented band in 2000 and played rhythm guitar and samples on three albums: Überjam, Up All Night, and Überjam Deux.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Carpenter (musician)</span> Musical artist

Brian Carpenter is an American musician, songwriter, composer, and arranger. He is the lead singer and songwriter for the Boston, Massachusetts band Beat Circus. In 2011, he formed Brian Carpenter & The Confessions and released its debut album in 2015. He is also a founder and lead arranger of Ghost Train Orchestra in Brooklyn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fernando Otero</span> Musical artist

Fernando Otero is a Grammy-award-winning Argentine pianist, vocalist, and composer.

Harlem Quartet is a string quartet that was originally composed of first-place laureates of the Sphinx Competition for Black and Latino string players. They were formed in 2006. The members are first violinist Ilmar Gavilán, second violinist Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador, and cellist Felix Umansky. The Quartet won Best Instrumental Composition at the 2013 Grammy Awards for Mozart Goes Dancing.

Reza Vali is an Iranian musician and composer.

Third stream is a music genre that is a fusion of jazz and classical music. The term was coined in 1957 by composer Gunther Schuller in a lecture at Brandeis University. There are many ways to define third-stream music. It could refer to a group of jazz musicians playing solely, or a jazz soloist performing with a symphony orchestra, as long as the musicians are able to interpret and play jazz music. Improvisation is generally seen as a vital component of third stream. In third-stream music, composers incorporated elements of classical music, such as the use of jazz instruments and classical music forms, into their jazz compositions. The fusion of jazz and classical music is also viewed as "born out of a reciprocal interest: the interest of the classical community in the developments in jazz music and the interest of the jazz community in the advances of classical music." The innovative idea of fusing jazz and classical music pushed the boundaries of traditional classical music and introduced a new genre that blends the two styles into a unique hybrid form.

Quartet San Francisco is a non-traditional and eclectic string quartet led by violinist Jeremy Cohen. The group played their first concert in 2001 and has recorded five albums. Playing a wide range of music genres including jazz, blues, tango, swing, funk, and pop, the group challenges the traditional classical music foundation of the string quartet.

This is a Nonesuch Records discography, organized by catalog number.

David Schiff is an American composer, writer and conductor whose music draws on elements of jazz, rock, and klezmer styles, showing the influence of composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Mahler, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Terry Riley. His music has been performed by major orchestras and festivals around the United States and by soloists David Shifrin, Regina Carter, David Taylor, Marty Ehrlich, David Krakauer, Nadine Asin and Peter Kogan. He is the author of books on the music of Elliott Carter, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. His work has been honored by the League-ISCM National Composers Competition award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for his book on Elliott Carter.

<i>Moondog</i> (1969 album) 1969 studio album by Moondog

Moondog is an album by the American composer Moondog, released by Columbia Masterworks Records on October 1, 1969. The album was made on the initiative of the producer James William Guercio and recorded at Columbia's main studio with Moondog conducting 50 musicians. It consists of compositions written by Moondog in the 1950s and 1960s as he moved from jazz conventions into becoming a classical composer, resulting in a combination of classical influences and elements of what critics have described as minimalist music and third stream. The album includes short symphonic-styled works, canons, chaconnes and a couple of jazz-inspired tracks, one in memory of Charlie Parker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Publig</span> Austrian composer

Michael Publig is an Austrian composer, pianist, instructor, and music manager. He studied piano with Roland Batik at the City of Vienna Conservatory and Social and Economic Sciences at the Vienna University of Economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Wiancko</span> American cellist and composer (born 1983)

Paul Wiancko is an American composer and cellist of the Kronos Quartet.

Curtis Rae Hasselbring is an American jazz trombonist, guitarist and composer.

<i>Hothouse Stomp</i> 2011 studio album by Ghost Train Orchestra

Hothouse Stomp is the debut album by Ghost Train Orchestra featuring new arrangements of previously obscure music from late 1920s Chicago and Harlem, specifically Tiny Parham, Charlie Johnson, Fess Williams, and McKinney's Cotton Pickers. It was released on the Accurate Records label in 2011.

<i>Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog</i> 2023 studio album by Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet

Songs and Symphoniques: the Music of Moondog is a collaboration album between Kronos Quartet and Ghost Train Orchestra featuring various arrangers and musical artists. Leading up to the album's release were the release of two singles; "High on a Rocky Leadge" and "Why Spend a Dark Nighty With You?"

References

  1. Lynch, Dave (2015-04-25). "Allmusic Biography". Allmusic. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  2. "Brian Carpenter: Eclectic Jazz, Rooted in Americana : NPR". NPR Music. 2011-04-07. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
  3. "Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra - Chart History". 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  4. Garelick, Jon (2014-03-27). "Ghost Train Orchestra delivers an unclassifiable mix". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  5. Gilbert, Andrew (2011-09-11). "Ghost Train picks up speed". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  6. Farber, Jim, "‘His work seems endless’: music stars pay tribute to the incredible life of Moondog," The Guardian, September 26, 2023
  7. Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog at Kronosquartet.org
  8. Elman, Steve (2012-12-27). "Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra". ArtsFuse. Retrieved 2015-04-25.
  9. Wilson, Jerome (2017-10-09). "Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra: Book of Rhapsodies, Vol. II". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2017-10-10.
  10. Rettig, James (2023-06-29). "Ghost Train Orchestra & Kronos Quartet Announce New Moondog Tribute Album Feat. Jarvis Cocker, Rufus Wainwright, Marissa Nadler, & More". Stereogum. Retrieved 2023-09-01.