the band
BRIAN CARPENTER: Vocals, Organ, Accordion, Harmonica, Trumpets, Musical Direction
Brian
Carpenter is a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger,
filmmaker, and actor who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has collaborated
with many artists nationally and locally in music and film including trombonist
Roswell Rudd, guitarist Marc Ribot, comic book writer 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 December 2000, 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. In 2005 he joined HUMANWINE playing accordion, trumpets, and glockenspiel. Carpenter also leads, composes original music, and arranges instrumental music for his 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 Liz Linder.