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Laura Anne Karpman (born March 1, 1959) is an American composer, whose work has included music for film, television, , theater, and the concert. She has won five Emmy Awards for her work. Karpman was trained at the Juilliard School, where she played jazz by day and honed her skills Scat singing in bars at night.
She worked with John Harbison at the Tanglewood Music Center, and attended Aspen Music School and the Ecole des Arts Americaines. At the University of Michigan, she graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Music degree 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. At Juilliard, Karpman also received mentorship from Nadia Boulanger.
She has held a residency at Sony Online Entertainment. 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 also took 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. Ask Your Mama was released by Avie Records in July 2016. Later, Karpman created "The 110 Project", an opera work commissioned by the L.A. Opera as a homage to the city's first freeway, I-110, as seen through four characters from 1940-2010, the lifespan of the freeway.
In 2014, Karpman co-founded the Alliance for Women Film Composers with Lolita Ritmanis and Miriam Cutler. The organization provides visibility and advocacy for women composers. In 2016, Karpman became the first woman elected to the music branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors.
Karpman composed the score for the Marvel Studios animated anthology series What If...? in 2021 , the streaming series Ms. Marvel in 2022 and the score for the superhero film The Marvels in 2023 . She composed the score for the 2023 film American Fiction, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.
She has a self-described lifelong obsession for drama, including soap opera, classical operas, and plays.
| 1999 | The Annihilation of Fish | Charles Burnett | |
| 2009 | The Tournament | Scott Mann | Entertainment Film Distributors |
| 2010 | Nothing Special | Angela Garcia Combs | |
| 2011 | Something Ventured | Dayna Goldfine Daniel Geller | |
| 2013 | Black Nativity | Kasi Lemmons | |
| The Galapagos Affair | Dayna Goldfine Daniel Geller | ||
| 2014 | States of Grace | Helen Cohen Mark Lipman | |
| Regarding Susan Sontag | Nancy Kates | ||
| 2015 | The State of Marriage | Jeff Kaufman | |
| Robin Hauser | |||
| 2016 | Paris Can Wait | Eleanor Coppola | Lifetime Films American Zoetrope |
| The Cinema Travellers | Shirley Abraham Amit Madheshiya | ||
| 2017 | Step | Amanda Lipitz | Artemis Rising Foundation |
| 2018 | Phil's Camino: So Far, So Good | Annie O'Neil | |
| Set It Up | Claire Scanlon | Treehouse Pictures | |
| Inventing Tomorrow | Laura Nix | Fishbowl Films HHMI Tangled Bank Studios | |
| 2019 | Sid & Judy | Stephen Kijak | Passion Pictures |
| 2020 | Paper Children | Alexandra Codina | CineMia |
| Love Is Love Is Love | Eleanor Coppola | American Zoetrope | |
| Senior Moment | Giorgio Serafini | Goff Productions | |
| 2021 | Pray Away | Kristine Stolakis | Artemis Rising Foundation Blumhouse Productions Chicken & Egg Pictures |
| Resort to Love | Steven Tsuchida | AK Worldwide The Malina Yarn Company Story Ink | |
| 2022 | Epic Bill | Quinnolyn Benson-Yates | Red Wrap Productions |
| 2023 | The Marvels | Nia DaCosta | Marvel Studios |
| American Fiction | Cord Jefferson | Orion Pictures MRC Film T-Street Productions 3 Arts Entertainment | |
| The Only Girl in the Orchestra | Molly O'Brien | LFR INDUSTRIES | |
| 2025 | Julius Onah | Marvel Studios |
| 1997–2003 | The Living Edens | CBS Productions / BBC | 24 episodes |
| 2002 | Taken | DreamWorks Television | 10 episodes |
| 2002–2003 | Odyssey 5 | Columbia TriStar Domestic Television | 19 episodes |
| 2007–2022 | Craft in America | 18 episodes | |
| 2016–2017 | Underground | Sony Pictures Television | 20 episodes |
| 2019 | L.A.'s Finest | Sony Pictures Television Jerry Bruckheimer Television | 13 episodes |
| 2019 | Why We Hate | Amblin Television | 6 episodes Won - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special |
| 2020 | Lovecraft Country | Warner Bros. Television Studios Monkeypaw Productions Bad Robot | 10 episodes |
| 2021–2024 | What If...? | Marvel Studios Animation | 26 episodes |
| 2022 | From Scratch | Netflix | 8 episodes |
| 2022 | 61st Street | AMC BBC Studios | 16 episodes |
| 2022 | Ms. Marvel | Marvel Studios | 6 episodes |
| 2004 | EverQuest II |
| 2005 | |
| 2006 | |
| Field Commander | |
| 2007 | |
| 2011 | Kung Fu Panda 2 |
| 2012 | Guardians of Middle-earth |
| 2014 | Project Spark |
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Letters
BMI Film & TV Awards
Game Audio Network Guild Awards
Hollywood Music in Media Awards
News & Documentary Emmy Awards
Primetime Emmy Awards
Society of Composers & Lyricists Awards
By Laura Karpman:
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