Brian Barrentine

Lifelong artist and educator Brian Barrentine is the creator, composer, producer, and performer behind FunikiJam World Music Theatre and its signature character, Captain Jam. His career has moved across theatre, television, recording, concert performance, and early childhood arts education, bringing together a wide range of musical and theatrical traditions.

Brian began singing at age six, wrote his first book at seven, and by eight was staging neighborhood parades, plays, and festivals. Today, he pretty much does the same thing — just on a larger stage.

Brian joined AEA and SAG as a teenager and has built a stage career centered on leading and featured roles. He was cast in *Les Misérables* on Broadway but chose instead to tour Europe as Elvis in *Elvis the Musical*. His signature roles include Elvis, El Gallo in *The Fantasticks* at the American Masters Festival, Narrator in *Aladdin* national tour, Captain von Trapp in *The Sound of Music*, and Captain Jam in the long-running *FunikiJam* Off-Broadway and international touring productions.

His performance career has taken him from Southern churches and classical concerts to European concert halls, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the Country Music Hall of Fame, Marble Collegiate Church, and Le Cirque. Equally at home in jazz, Broadway, standards, country, gospel, rock & roll, and pop, Brian has performed in an unusually broad range of musical settings throughout his career.

On television, Brian has appeared in *The Good Wife*, *Madam Secretary*, *Law & Order: SVU*, *The Perfect Murder*, and other productions, as well as national commercial campaigns. Audiences may have seen him playing characters ranging from “Dad” and “Husband” to “Peter Pointer” and assorted law-enforcement officials.

Along the way, Brian developed a deep interest in early childhood arts education. He wrote curriculum for the Gymboree Music Program and served as Early Childhood Director at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, experiences that helped shape the work he would develop through FunikiJam.

Through FunikiJam World Music Theatre, Brian creates and produces interconnected experiences spanning Off-Broadway family musicals, touring productions, concerts, recordings, and weekly music-and-movement programs. The work combines original music, storytelling, movement, theatre, and traditions from around the world, inviting children and families to experience music together through active participation.

When he is not performing, teaching, writing, or producing, Brian continues creating new music and theatre — carrying forward much the same impulse that had him organizing neighborhood shows and festivals as a kid.