Published September 2014
Throwback to Prohibition Jazz: Ghost Train Orchestra
By: Bobby Hill,WPFW 98.3
When one hears the Ghost Train Orchestra play their wonderfully reimagined jazz of the 1920s and 1930s, it’s easy to think that the great Buddy Bolden has been bought back to life. Ghost Train Orchestra is a big band founded by composer/arranger Brian Carpenter. This critically-acclaimed ensemble brings their bold and energetic performances stylings to the Rosslyn Jazz Festival on September 6th. The ensemble features, among others, violinist Mazz Swift whose musical collaborations range from Butch Morris conductions, to the avant funk of Burnt Sugar to the hip hop stylings of Jay-Z. It also includes Andy Laster, whose associations range from Lyle Lovett to jazz multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich, and New York new music scene drummer Rob Garcia. The full ensemble is rounded out by flute, trombone, tuba and guitar. Trumpeter and band leader Brian Carpenter was originally an engineer, before becoming a part of the developing music scene in Florida in the mid-1990s, ultimately moving to Massachusetts in 2000 to hosting a radio show on WZBC, and forming the band Beat Circus in 2002. In 2006, Carpenter was hired as the musical director for a run of vaudeville shows at the Regent Theater, after which he formed the 9-piece Ghost Train Orchestra, a band devoted to reworking compositions by idiosyncratic composers from the late 1930s, first on the bands 2011 release “Hothouse Stomp”, followed by 2013’s “Book of Rhapsodies”.
The Ghost Train Orchestra book of rhapsodies includes the work of such now forgotten jazz leaders as Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Orchestra and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, as well as jazz masters like Bird, Dizzy, and Duke Ellington, and animated film arranger Raymond Scott.
“I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,
You’re nasty. You’re dirty, take it away.”
(Fats Waller)
The stock market crash and prohibition ultimately succeeded in taking much of the music away through the mass closing of the supporting dance hall circuit. But the Jazz Age nightlife returns heartily once the Ghost Train Orchestra hits the stage as part of the Rosslyn Jazz Festival Saturday, September 6th at 2:15PM.
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Bobby Hill is the ultimate DC jazz activist – a writer, radio honcho, educator and presenter who has had enormous impact on audiences for more than three decades on WPFW 89.3 FM. This year, Hill was cited by the national Jazz Journalists Association as one of 24 "Jazz Heroes" of 2014. Published in the Washington Post, City Paper and numerous jazz journals, Bobby was an adjunct professor of hip-hop culture at George Mason University from 2002 to 2006. From 2007 to 2010 he was program director of WPFW. All simultaneous with his 28 year career as a corporate manager for FDIC. Currently he hosts 'Overnight Jazz - Part 1' on Friday mornings (midnight to 2:00 a.m.).