LAURA KARPMAN BIOGRAPHY

    Four-time Emmy award winning composer Laura Karpman maintains a vibrant career in
film, television, videogame, concert and theater music. Her distinguished credits include
scoring Steven Spielberg’s Emmy-winning miniseries Taken for DreamWorks/Sci-Fi
Channel; ABC’s primetime drama In Justice; Sandlot II; DoingTime On Maple Drive;
A Woman Of Independent Means; Odyssey 5; Man In The Chair, The Living Edens,
the extraordinary series of documentaries about the world’s last untouched environments,
which earned Karpman 4 Emmy Awards, in addition to her 6 other Emmy nominations. After
writing music for Sony’s smash hit video game Everquest II, Karpman went on to become
the resident orchestral composer of Sony Online Entertainment, where she continues to
complete scores on numerous online interactive video games. She received a 2005 Game
Audio Network (GANG) award for her videogame music.

    Karpman’s concert music has been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Hollywood
Bowl, Lincoln Center, and The Tanglewood Music Festival, by ensembles including The Los
Angeles Philharmonic, Concordia, The American Composers’ Orchestra, The New York Youth
Symphony, Red Bull Artsehcro, Richmond Symphony, Prague Symphony, the Young
Musician’s Foundation Orchestra, and the Hollywood Studio Orchestra, among others.
Recent works include The Transitive Property Of Equality, conducted by Marin Alsop
at the 2006 Cabrillo Festival, Heebie Jeebies, a choral work for The Juilliard Choral Union
conducted by Judith Clurman, on the occasion of the centennial of The Juilliard School,
Lincoln Center; Music from Everquest II, multiple performances by El Paso Symphony,
Video Games Live Orchestra, The Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic; Rounds
by The Society for New Music, Syracuse, About Joshua, for the acclaimed Debussy Trio,
Common Tone, for electric violist Martha Mooke, and Nick Names, a song cycle for
Boulder’s Sound Circle. Upcoming commissions & performances include Scat, a bassoon
concerto commissioned by Lumír Vanek and the Prague Symphony; Saxophone Quartet
by The San Jose Saxophone Quartet, and Melting Pot, a series of multimedia works that
combine spoken word, rap, opera and jazz out of Harlem Renaissance poetry. Karpman’s
concert music awards include the Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, ASCAP Foundation grants, Meet the Composer grants, residencies at Tanglewood,
McDowell Colony, and The Sundance Institute. Karpman received her doctorate from
Juilliard where she studied with Milton Babbitt.

    A frequent composer for the theater, Karpman recently completed her third musical for Los
Angeles’ classical theatre company A Noise Within (ANW), Carrolling, based on the works
of Lewis Carroll, after the three-season run of her setting of Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales.
Additional works include ANW’s production of Shakespeare’s Othello, The Tempest,
Moliere’s School For Wives, As You Like It and Homecoming. Her music for The
Cherry Orchard recently premiered to rave reviews at The Georgia Shakespeare Festival.
Karpman’s collaborations with singer/actor Tonya Pinkins have included adaptations of
music for That Old Black Magic and Push De Button for an evening of Harold Arlen
songs at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Another Hundred People and I Remember for
Stephen Sondheim’s 75th Birthday performance at The New Amsterdam Theater. Next
season Karpman will score Jean Racinein’s Phaedra.

    In addition to writing music for film, videogames, concert and theater venues, Karpman is an
active member of the faculty of the UCLA School of Film and Television and was recently a
guest composer of The Juilliard School Composition Forum.

    More information at www.LauraKarpman.com


 

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