Four-time Emmy award winning composer Laura Karpman maintains a vibrant career in film, videogame, concert and theater music. Her distinguished credits include scoring Steven Spielberg’s Emmy winning miniseries Taken for Dreamworks/ Sci-Fi Channel; Sandlot II, Doing Time On Maple Drive, A Woman of Independent Means, Odyssey 5, Girl Play, The Living Edens, the extraordinary series of documentaries about the world’s last untouched environments, which earned Karpman four Emmys, in addition to her six 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.

In concert music, Karpman’s awards include the Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP Foundation grants, Meet the Composer grants, residencies at the Tanglewood, MCDowell Colony, and The Sundance Institute. Karpman received her doctorate from Juilliard where she studied with Milton Babbitt. Her 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, Richmond Symphony, Prague Symphony, the Young Musician’s Foundation Orchestra, and the Hollywood Studio Orchestra, among others. Recent works include About Joshua, for the acclaimed Debussy Trio, Common Tone, for electric violist Martha Mooke, and Nick Names, a song cycle for Boulder’ Sound Circle. Upcoming commissions include a choral work for the Juilliard School Centennial in Alice Tully Hall; Scat, a bassoon concerto commissioned by Lum’r Vanek and the Prague Symphony; and Melting Pot, a series of multimedia works that combine the spoken word, rap, opera and jazz out of Harlem Renaissance poetry.

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 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 Songheim’s 75th Birthday performance at The New Amsterdam Theater. Next season Karpman will score Othello in Los Angeles.

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