BRIAN CARPENTER: Vocals, Organ, Harmonica, Accordion, Trumpets, Musical Direction
Brian
Carpenter is a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger,
filmmaker, and actor. He has collaborated with many artists nationally and
locally in music and film including Michael Gira, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, comic-book author Harvey Pekar, filmmaker Lorelei Pepi, and musician/multi-media
artist Brian Dewan. His composition credits include scores for acclaimed
animator Lorelei Pepi's film Happy and Gay and a song cycle about
turn-of-the-century Coney Island entitled Dreamland.
Carpenter was born in the state of Florida and comes from a large Southern Baptist family based in Birmingham, Alabama and Marianna, Florida. He grew up on a steady diet of old-time and Southern Gospel music. Throughout middle school and high school, he played trumpet in school concert and jazz orchestras, and acted in school musicals. In 1990 he settled in Gainesville to study engineering and became part of the fertile early-90s music scene there with bands Less Than Jake, Aleka's Attic, What It Is, and Sister Hazel. During this time, Carpenter spawned one of the biggest music festivals of the Southeast, the Gainesville Jazz & Pop Festival.
In 2001, Carpenter moved to Boston to direct a film documentary on the life and legacy of Albert Ayler with a group of MIT and NYU film students. From 2001-2005 Carpenter produced the free-form experimental radio show Free Association on WZBC-FM at Boston College. Carpenter also leads and arranges instrumental music for the 10-piece Ghost Train Orchestra featuring some of the most adventurous musicians of the New York downtown jazz scene.
In 2002 Carpenter spawned the first incarnation of Beat Circus.
Photograph by Lauren Goldberg.