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Composer website: http://www.laurakarpman.com/
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laura Anne Karpman (born March 1, 1959, in Los Angeles) is an American composer, whose work has included music for film, television, video games, theater, and the concert hall. She has won four Emmy Awards for her work. Karpman was trained at The Juilliard School, where she played jazz, and honed her skills scatting in bars.
Karpman worked with John Harbison at the Tanglewood Music Center, and attended Aspen Music School and the Ecole des Arts Americaines, where she worked with Nadia Boulanger.[citation needed] She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Michigan, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude, studying with William Bolcom and Leslie Bassett. She received both her Doctorate and master's degree in Music Composition at The Juilliard School, where her principal teacher was Milton Babbitt.
Compositions by Karpman have been commissioned by Tonya Pinkins, Los Angeles Opera, American Composers Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, The Juilliard Choral Union, Pacific Serenades, and percussionist Evelyn Glennie. They have been performed internationally.[citation needed]
Karpman's theater catalog includes three musicals for Los Angeles’s "A Noise Within" theater company, as well as underscores for dozens of classic plays.[citation needed] Among her media music credits are Steven Spielberg's Emmy-winning, 20-hour TV miniseries, Taken; and PBS's series The Living Edens (for which she received nine Emmy nominations). She has scored numerous films, television programs and video games (including music for Halo 3 and her award-winning score for Everquest II).[citation needed] Karpman received an Annie Award nomination for A Monkey's Tale, a short film commissioned by the Chinese government, which later premiered in the US and was performed by the Detroit Symphony.
Karpman’s Grammy-winning Ask Your Mama premiered at Carnegie Hall on March 16, 2009, with performances by Jessye Norman, Cassandra Wilson, The Roots, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's conducted by George Manahan. With Langston Hughes's epic poem for a libretto, Karpman's work exhibited an eclectic musical mix. Using Hughes' own voice at the core of the work, this musical includes passages from Louis Armstrong, Big Maybelle, Pigmeat Markham and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, integrated with projected images by Rico Gatson and additional archival video, as well as Hughes's own poetry. Annie Dorsen directed it.[citation needed] ASK YOUR MAMA was released by Avie Records in July 2016.
Later, Karpman created "The 110 Project", a work commissioned by the L.A. Opera as a paean to the city's first freeway, I-110, which turned 70 in 2009.[citation needed]
In 2016, Karpman became the first woman elected to the music branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors.
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