Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train and Looney Tunes

This is a RE-BLOG of a post on Brian Carpenter's site. Brian is the brilliant composer/arranger/musician that has crafted the musical score for Lorelei Pepi's film (in production) "Happy & Gay."

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Friday December 17, 2010
Ghost Train Orchestra
Barbes
376 9th Avenue
Brooklyn NY
10:00pm (2 sets)

Friday January 21, 2011
Ghost Train Orchestra
Barbes
376 9th Avenue
Brooklyn NY
10:00pm (2 sets)

Post by Brian Carpenter on November 19, 2010 9:34 AM

I've recently been preparing arrangements for a short set of early American cartoon music the Ghost Train Orchestra will perform on Friday December 17th and Friday January 21st at Barbes in Brooklyn. Raymond Scott and Carl Stalling are two of the composers most often associated with cartoon music, although there were many others -- Scott Bradley and Sammy Timberg, to name two other notables. Irwin Chusid, the man perhaps most responsible for bringing Raymond Scott to the public eye over the last two decades, sent me some of the original charts for sextet. Scott did not compose his music for cartoons but his music was often quoted by Carl Stalling in his scores to Looney Tunes cartoons of the '40s and '50s. I've been fascinated with Carl Stalling's work ever since the days of watching Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings as a kid, maybe without knowing it at an early age. My score for Lorelei Pepi's film Happy and Gay was inspired by Stalling's work for animator Ub Iwerks. For the 12/17 performance, I've added guitarist Danny Blume (who is a huge fan of Carl Stalling's work in particular) and bassist Joe Fitzgerald, to join the regular cast of GTO. Hope you'll come see us perform this unique music.