Ghost Train Orchestra is a Brooklyn-based jazz and chamber ensemble led by 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. The band first recorded in 2009 at Avatar Studios in Manhattan and released Hothouse Stomp in 2011 on Accurate Records.
The band's repertoire features Carpenter's rearrangements and often avant-garde treatments of obscure music from the 1920s and 1930s. Much of the source material is culled from found 78s and rediscoveries by music historians and collectors such as Mitchell Kaba and Irwin Chusid.