Laura Karpman

Five-time Emmy winning composer and composer of the Grammy-winning album Ask Your Mama, Laura Karpman's vibrant career spans film, television, video-game and concert music. Her distinguished credits include the series Underground, in collaboration with Raphael Saadiq and John Legend, Step, a Sundance 2017 favorite, Eleanor Coppola's Paris Can Wait starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin, Kasi Lemmons' Black Nativity starring Jennifer Hudson and Forest Whitaker, Steven Spielberg's miniseries Taken, the Showtime series Odyssey 5, and Masters of Science Fiction for which she received Emmy nominations. She also contributed to Sophia Coppola's 2017 The Beguiled. Commissioned by Carnegie Hall, she collaborated with soprano Jessye Norman and The Roots on Ask Your Mama, a multimedia opera on a text by Langston Hughes, which received its sold-out premiere at Carnegie Hall in March 2009, and its West Coast premiere at The Hollywood Bowl and was revived at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Laura has been commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival and is developing an opera Balls, a collaboration with NY Times columnist Gail Collins, with Yuval Sharon's The Industry. Laura has received two GANG awards and an additional nomination for her video-game music which has been performed by orchestras internationally, as well as an Annie Feature nomination. She serves as an advisor for the Sundance Film Scoring Labs and is on the faculty of the USC Film Scoring Program. Laura is the founding President of the Alliance for Women Film Composers and is proud to serve as a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.