Laura Karpman Lecturer--Composition email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Four-time Emmy winner Laura Karpman is one of few women scoring film and television. Equally fluent in jazz, classical and world music, she possesses a remarkable breadth of experience.

Karpman was a prodigy who began writing music from the age of seven. She grew up composing and performing classical music, studying with legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger. Karpman went on to receive her doctorate at Juilliard under renowned composer Milton Babbitt.

After a decade in New York, during which she enjoyed remarkable success as a composer of concert music – decorated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, amongst others – she was invited to study at the Sundance Film Scoring Workshop. At Sundance, working with composers David Newman, Dave Grusin, David Raskin and Shirley Walker, Karpman discovered the revolution in progress in the world of music based on the new computer technology. Moving to L.A. shortly thereafter, she established herself within two years.

Karpman scored Steven Spielberg and Leslie Bohem’s Emmy-winning epic miniseries “Taken” for DreamWorks and the SciFi Channel. This project, the biggest miniseries ever made, stars Dakota Fanning. Based on her huge success with the score for “Taken,” Karpman was brought on to score “Everquest II,” among the new generation of video games now incorporating live orchestras.

Karpman’s feature work includes, “Fathers and Sons,” an independent ensemble drama written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, “Breakup,” starring Bridget Fonda and Keifer Sutherland, “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and a feature by world-renowned director Charles Burnett ’69, MFA ’77, “The Annihilation of Fish,” starring Lynn Redgrave and James Earl Jones.

“The Living Edens,” an extraordinary series of documentaries about the world’s last unspoiled environments that marshaled the talents of top documentary filmmakers, earned Karpman four Emmys, and six nominations, in the category of Best Individual Achievement in Music.

Parallel to her film and television composing, Karpman has a distinguished career as a composer of concert music. Her works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Tanglewood Music Festival. A frequent composer for the theater, Karpman’s opera, “Escape” was commissioned for the LA Opera. During her ongoing association with the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, she has composed underscore for “Twelfth Night,” “A Comedy of Errors” and Moliére’s “The Miser” and songs and underscore for “The Tempest.”

Karpman’s numerous awards include a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Foundation grants, multiple Meet the Composer grants and a Vogelstein Foundation grant, as well as residencies at Tanglewood, the McDowell Colony and the Sundance Institute.