Laura Karpman - Inventing Tomorrow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) '2018

Tracks list

With a feverish imagination, impeccable musicianship, complexity, versatility,
unbridled joy, and fearlessness, Laura Karpman makes music, which is, in the
words of George Manahan, music director of the American Composer’s
Orchestra, a rare combination of heart and groin. With her rigorous musical
approach, coupled with conceptual and progressive uses of technology and
recording, Laura is a true 21st century American composer.

Four-time Emmy winning composer and composer of the Grammy-winning album ASK
YOUR MAMA, Laura Karpman maintains a vibrant career in film, television,
videogame 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 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
videogame 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.

EDUCATION
A native of Los Angeles, Laura began composing music at seven years old and
continued her studies at Phillips Academy at Andover and the National Music
Camp, Interlochen, Michigan. Her lifelong obsession with jazz began early on as
well, when, at age 11 she started memorizing Ella Fitzgerald’s scat
solos. 

Later she started playing and singing in high school bands, sneaking into clubs
with a fake I.D. to hear great players like Anthony Braxton, Oscar Peterson,
Ella Fitzgerald, Ahmad Jamal, and Betty Carter. Laura attended the University of
Michigan School of Music, studying composition with William Bolcom and Leslie
Bassett, and spent a life-changing summer studying with the legendary Nadia
Boulanger at Fontainebleau. She then went on to Juilliard, where she received
her Master’s and Doctoral degrees as a student of Milton Babbitt,
composing and studying the complexities of concert music by day, while playing
jazz and scat singing in Manhattan clubs by night.

Laura subsequently received kudos in concert music with awards including the
Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2 ASCAP
Foundation grants, multiple Meet the Composer grants, and residencies at Aspen,
Tanglewood and The MacDowell Colony. She credits a fellowship to the Sundance
Institute’s Composer’s Lab as a pivotal moment in her life. For
the first time, she saw computers and music work together and was utterly
enthralled with this then new technology. She relocated back to Los Angeles from
New York, attended the ASCAP Film Scoring workshop, and soon after began working
steadily in the commercial world.

TELEVISION/FILM MUSIC
Laura has scored projects for every major network, including two seasons of the
award-winning UNDERGROUND, co-scored with Raphael Saadiq. She created a unique
soundscape for Showtime’s acclaimed science fiction series, ODYSSEY 5
starring Peter Weller. This Emmy-nominated highly unusual score, featuring 12
cellos, bassoons, basses, duduk and countertenor, caught the attention of Steven
Spielberg, who invited her to create an epic orchestral score for his 20-hour
miniseries, TAKEN. She seamlessly intertwined traditional Americana with
evocative modernist strains in this sprawling, adventurous sci-fi score.

Other notable works include the acclaimed DOING TIME ON MAPLE DRIVE directed by
Ken Olin for Fox, DASH AND LILLY directed by Kathy Bates for A&E, and the highly
rated SINS OF THE MOTHER, starring Jill Scott for Lifetime. She also composed
music for NBC’s hit miniseries A WOMAN OF INDEPENDENT MEANS, starring
Sally Field, creating music stylistically spanning the first half of the 20th
century. Laura scored the series WIOU for CBS and the procedural drama IN
JUSTICE for Robert and Michelle King on ABC. She has also collaborated with
directors Michael Tolkin, Michael Petroni and Darnell Martin on the limited
series MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION for ABC, for which she received an Emmy
nomination for her quirky score to JERRY WAS A MAN. She most recently created a
massive suspense soundtrack for LAST MAN STANDING, Lifetimes first action movie,
produced by Gale Ann Hurd and directed by Ernest Dickerson.

Laura’s imaginative scores for numerous independent films include BLACK
NATIVITY for director Kasi Lemmons and Fox Searchlight; for THE BREAK UP
starring Bridget Fonda and Keifer Sutherland; FOR MAN IN THE CHAIR starring
Christopher Plummer and Michael Angarano; THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH starring Lynn
Redgrave and James Earl Jones for director Charles Burnett; and most recently,
the hybrid orchestral score for THE TOURNAMENT. She received a feature Annie
nomination for her score A MONKEY’S TALE, combining Chinese instruments
and traditional cartoon scoring, and has enjoyed creating scores for SANDLOT 2
and ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE, JR., directed by David Mickey Evans.

INTERACTIVE MUSIC
Laura has composed music for dozens of game titles, including the large
orchestral scores for Sony’s EVERQUEST 2 and many of its updates. She
created an epic choral sound and set a Middle Scots war text for the PS3 launch
title and PSP versions of UNTOLD LEGENDS: DARK KINGDOM. Laura is currently
scoring Microsoft’s PROJECT SPARK, and has recently worked on Kinect
Disneyland Adventures, Warner Brothers’ GUARDIANS OF MIDDLE EARTH, and a
Chinese action score for KUNG FU PANDA 2 for DreamWorks/THQ, and has contributed
additional music to Clive Barker’s JERICHO and HALO 3. She was included
in the original production of Video Games Live and received 2 GANG awards for
her work on EVERQUEST 2 and KINECT DISNEYLAND ADVENTURES. Her music has also
been featured by The National Symphony at The Kennedy Center, and performed
throughout Europe. She conducted Games in Concert 2, Metropole Orchestra and
PA’dam Choir, Music Centre Vredenburg, in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in
2007. She also contributed to PLAY FOR JAPAN, a collection of tracks from top
videogame composers for the Japanese tsunami relief effort.

NON-NARRATIVE MUSIC
Laura has a passion for documentary film, and has won four Emmys and been
nominated for an additional five for her work in this genre. She has served as
an advisor for the Sundance Composer’s Lab. She credits THE LIVING EDENS,
the long running nature series on PBS, for helping to shape her creative voice.
To create a sound for the last unspoiled places on earth, Laura melded world
music with jazz and traditional Western scoring and started sampling from her
collection of over 200 instruments from across the globe.

Laura has scored dozens of documentaries, including THE REAGAN SHOW, STEP,
REGARDING SUSAN SONTAG for HBO, and three seasons of the Peabody award-winning
PBS series, CRAFT IN AMERICA, where her re-contextualizing of classic American
tunes earned her another Emmy nomination. For directors Dan Geller and Dayna
Goldfine she wrote the music for THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR, which premiered at the
Telluride Film Festival and was showcased at the Berlin Film Festival, as well
as a “cool” jazz score, featuring the Turtle Island String Quartet,
for Geller and Goldfines feature documentary SOMETHING VENTURED, which premiered
in 2011 at South By Southwest. Laura has also helped shape dozens of winning
political campaigns, having written music for candidates Diane Feinstein,
Charles Schumer, Lois Capps, and many others—she scored a third of the
campaigns for the DCCC in 2000.

CONCERT MUSIC
Hailed by Vanity Fair as “super-lush…always impressive,”
Laura’s epic multimedia work ASK YOUR MAMA was commissioned by Carnegie
Hall. At its sold-out world premiere there, The New York Times reported that the
audience “thundered its approval,” and raved that the
ground-breaking music, “melding Ivesian collage with club-culture
remixing, morphed from one vivid section to the next in a dreamlike flow.”
ASK YOUR MAMA, based on an iconic cycle of poems by Langston Hughes, was written
for Jessye Norman, The Roots, Nnenna Freelon, d’Adre Aziza, and large
orchestra, conducted by George Manahan. The work received its West Coast
Premiere at the Hollywood Bowl, returned to New York’s Apollo Theater in
2013, and Avie Records will release the recording in 2015.

SIREN SONGS, premiering on June 11th, 2015 was commissioned by the Pacific
Symphony to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its music director, Carl, St.
Clair. This multimedia work explores women, the ocean and our alarming future;
it is based on a set of poems by the exceptional poet, Amy Gerstler, and is
accompanied by video and animation by Tempe Hale, who has used footage from
Gregory MacGillivray, an Academy-Award nominated cinematographer. Laura’s
concert music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra (with Marin Alsop), Concordia, the
American Composers’ Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, Northwest Sinfonia,
Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the Detroit, Houston, National, New York
Youth, Richmond, and El Paso Symphonies. Upcoming commissions include works for
The Gay Men’s Chorus of San Francisco (2015) and WILDE TALES for
Glimmerglass (2016). Laura has also received an Opera Grant for Female Composers
from Opera America to develop BALLS, an opera about the Billie Jean King v.
Bobby Riggs tennis match with NY Times columnist Gail Collins. She is also
developing multimedia works for clarinetist David Krakauer and Evelyn Glennie.

Recent commissions include the evening-length THE HIDDEN WORLD OF GIRLS, in
collaboration with NPR’s the Kitchen Sisters and visual artists Obscura
Digital, for which she also served as creative director, for the Cabrillo
Festival; ONE TEN PROJECT for the Los Angeles Opera, celebrating both the 70th
anniversary of the dedication of the freeway and the 25th anniversary of the Los
Angeles Opera; DIFFERENT LANES for string quartet and two iPads for Pacific
Serenades; THE TRANSITIVE PROPERTY OF EQUALITY for orchestra and electronics,
conducted by Marin Alsop with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, commissioned by
Red Bull; WAXING NOSTALGIC for Laura Klugherz (viola) and Roberto Limón
(guitar); NOW ALL SET, a memorial tribute to her teacher Milton Babbitt, for
Perspectives of New Music.

THEATER MUSIC
Laura is an active composer for the theater. She has created underscore and
songs for A Noise Within in Los Angeles, The Georgia Shakespeare Festival, The
Old Globe Theater, and Los Angeles Theater Works, among others. She takes great
pride in A WILDE HOLIDAY, her original musical theater production of Oscar
Wildes Fairy Tales, which ran to critical acclaim for three seasons at A Noise
Within, and her work with Tony award-winning singer/actress Tonya Pinkins, for
whom she created arrangements for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Stephen Sondheims
75th Birthday Celebration.

TEACHING
Laura serves on the faculty of the USC Film Scoring Program & the New Media and
Music Technology Program at San Francisco Conservatory. From 2005-2009, as a
professor at UCLA in the School of Theater, Film, and Television, she taught
interdisciplinary multimedia performance and film music, mentoring the
collaboration between filmmaker and composer. In 2012-13, she ran the first
Master’s degree film-scoring program at Berklee College of Music, where
she taught videogame scoring as well as film composition. Laura serves as an
advisor at the Sundance Institute and has lectured at The Juilliard School, USC,
UCLA Herb Alpert School, Mills College, Berklee College of Music, Emerson
College, and The Tides Momentum Leadership Conference, and is a fellow of The
Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.

Tracklist:
01. Laura Karpman - Open Nature
02. Laura Karpman - No Fish Anymore
03. Laura Karpman - ISEF
04. Laura Karpman - Birding Wailoa Pond
05. Laura Karpman - Calm Waters
06. Laura Karpman - Bellandur Lake
07. Laura Karpman - Practice
08. Laura Karpman - Family Dinners
09. Laura Karpman - Hotspot Map
10. Laura Karpman - Lead In The Sand
11. Laura Karpman - Nuha’s Goals
12. Laura Karpman - Sahithi’s Sadness
13. Laura Karpman - LA Arrival
14. Laura Karpman - We Are!
15. Laura Karpman - Opening Ceremony
16. Laura Karpman - Pin Exchange
17. Laura Karpman - Preparations
18. Laura Karpman - Judging
19. Laura Karpman - She Was Tough
20. Laura Karpman - Awards Ceremony
21. Laura Karpman - Nice To Meet You
22. Laura Karpman - Seeing Old Friends
23. Laura Karpman - Discovery
24. Laura Karpman - Not Getting Anywhere
25. Laura Karpman - Volcano
26. Laura Karpman - Inventing Tomorrow

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