Brian Carpenter is a singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, filmmaker, radio producer, engineer, and actor. He is the founder of Beat Circus, a Boston-based genre-bending ensemble founded in 2002 which spins cabaret, gospel, progressive rock, and Appalachian string music into its own blend of dark, funereal Americana. In 2008, he released Dreamland on Cuneiform Records, the first part of a "Weird American Gothic" trilogy of albums co-produced by NY producer Martin Bisi.  His second part of the trilogy, a Southern Gothic opus entitled Boy From Black Mountain, followed in 2009, and went on to win the Independent Music Award for Best Alt/Country Album that year. 

Brian is also the founder, arranger, and trumpeter for the Ghost Train Orchestra, a ten-piece jazz orchestra based in New York City. Their debut album Hothouse Stomp: The Music of 1920s Chicago and Harlem was produced by Grammy award winner Danny Blume and released in 2011 on Accurate Records. The album appeared on NPR's Best Jazz of 2011.

Brian Carpenter has been featured on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He has collaborated or recorded with Michael Gira, Swans, Brian Dewan, Marc Ribot, and Roswell Rudd. He is also the director of two films currently in production, including a feature-length documentary on the life and legacy of Albert Ayler, on which he collaborated with many artists, including guitarist Marc Ribot, avant-garde filmmaker Michael Snow, trombonist Roswell Rudd, and comic strip writer Harvey Pekar.

Brian is also the creator and host of the "free-form experimental radio show" Free Association, which aired weekly on WFIT (1996-1998) and WZBC (2001-2005) and continues to air on WZBC occasionally for special programs he produces. His latest radio production is "The Sound of Horror", a 4-hour study on sound design in horror and science-fiction films now used in film sound classes around the world. Carpenter has begun authoring a book on the subject of sound design in horror films.

2011-12 will see Carpenter fronting and recording a new band Brian Carpenter & The Confessions. Other upcoming projects for 2011-12 include production on the second album by the Ghost Train Orchestra, a film score for animator Lorelei Pepi's cartoon Happy & Gay, and an acting role as Dadaist founder Hugo Ball in acclaimed filmmaker Martha Swetzoff's Perfect, Kind-Hearted Wickedness.