- The infinite beauty of the versatile mind -

Composer and virtuoso soundscape artist Laura Karpman was raised on bebop and Beethoven.  Her outstanding versatility and extraordinary ability for emotional and sensory attunement has earned her a reputation for her hybrid creation of music, visuals and narrative in a plethora of genres including film, television, concert music, multimedia, and theatre.  Trained at The Juilliard School, she studied with Pultizer Prize-winning American composer Milton Babbitt, while also playing jazz and scatting in bars. 

Karpman, a four time Emmy award winning composer, has also received numerous concert music awards throughout her professional career, and has had her music performed by a myriad of major ensembles throughout the US and abroad.  She was among the first composers selected as a Sundance Institute Film Scoring Fellow, where she worked with Dave Grusin, Robert Redford, and David Raksin. She received a G.A.N.G award for her videogame music for Everquest II, and several BMI awards, and the Charles Ives Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is an active member of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and a Fellow for the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities.  The Sony Online Entertainment resident orchestral composer for 2005-2006, she has scored many highly successful video games, such as Everquest II, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom (PS3), and Field Commander, and has provided additional music for Halo 3 and Jericho.

Her scoring credits include, to name a few: The 20-hour Emmy-winning Steven Spielberg miniseries “Taken”, the  Emmy-nominated “Odyssey 5”,  “In Justice," the Emmy-nominated "Masters of Science Fiction,” the  Emmy-nominated "Craft in America,”  “A Woman of Independent Means,”  “Man in the Chair,” the Emmy-Award winning “The Living Edens,” “The Break Up,” and “Annihilation of Fish.”  She also scored the animated short "A Monkey’s Tale," commissioned by the Government of China, which received an Annie Award nomination for Best Music.  Her 5 albums allow listeners to immerse themselves in Karpman’s  infinite and surprisingly detailed sensory worlds (“The Living Edens”, “Steven Spielberg presents Taken Soundtrack”, “A Woman of Independent Means”,  “A Promise to Carolyn”).

Laura Karpman is also a frequent composer for theatre (“Carrolling” –based on the works by Lewis Carrol,  Oscar Wilde’s “Fairy Tales”, Shakespeare’s “HENRY IV” –“ Othello” – “Phaedra” – “The Tempest”- Moliere’s “School for Wives”, “Dear Brutus”, “As You Like It”, amongst others),  and has an amazing capacity for engineering extraordinarily creative collaborative projects with highly talented artists of different backgrounds, musical genres and artistic specialties.

One of this inspirational artist’s current projects is her concert piece “ASK YOUR MAMA,” which premiered to a sold-out Carnegie Hall and played at the Hollywood Bowl (George Manahan conducting).  The work realizes the vision of poet Langston Hughes in its text-setting, and features world-renown soprano Jessye Norman, jazz great Nnenna Freelon, The Roots (Black Thought and Questlove), and de’Adre Aziza together on stage in a ground-breaking multimedia hybrid. The concerts bring together a wide-ranging audience from varying races, backgrounds and ages, which show its convening power.

This compelling tapestry of original orchestral music -- integrated with recorded selections extracted from a dozen traditions -- is accompanied by Hughes’s own voice and projected images by, amongst others, Rico Gatson and other archival video.  Be sure to watch for ASK YOUR MAMA as it travels the world, stopping in Atlanta next season and scheduled to be filmed and recorded.

Amongst other new projects, Karpman’s exciting and innovative “Melting Pot” mesmerized this team from the very moment we reviewed it.  

“Melting Pot” is an evolving multi-media work of through-composed jazz, opera, and hip-hop that confronts contemporary issues using classic American poetry. “Melting Pot” is still a work in progress; and in the meantime, don’t hesitate for a second to see “ASK YOUR MAMA” -- if you have the chance.

In addition, her “110 Project” for the Los Angeles Opera is about to be completed and can be previewed on LA Magazine’s “CityThink” website. Karpman is also slated to begin creating another work for the Cabrillo Festival (California) with the Kitchen Sisters.

We have the immense pleasure and privilege to interview her, to the delight of this international team and our readers worldwide.

MDM: Laura, thank you so much for responding to our questions today, we really admire your work, your professionalism and your humanity. Laura, when you were a child, a career in music was an option, a dream, an impossible or a path towards which you were directed by your environment? Please, tell us a bit about your background.

LAURA KARPMAN: It’s a funny story. My mother, who was a painter and sculptor, always believed music was the highest form of art. So she decided when she was pregnant that I would be a composer. And I’m not the rebellious sort. Or maybe I am. I grew up listening to jazz and classical music, as well as a host of other sounds. My mother would alternate well-worn LP’s of Stravinsky, Bernstein, Miles Davis, and Wes Montgomery, with occasional flamenco and Hebrew folk songs. I began composing when I was 7. I started poking around on the piano, composing simple songs. Soon after I began studying the piano and learning to read music. I never considered any other career path other than composing.

MDM: In your opinion, what is music's greatest but most overlooked quality? And what about its unyielding power?

LAURA KARPMAN: Music means so many things to so many different people. It can be soothing, haunting, dramatic, traditional, empowering. Think of all of the change music has inspired from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to songs of the Civil Rights Movement. Music has an unbelievable power to galvanize social change. Think of Marian Anderson standing at Lincoln’s feet singing to a huge audience. One of my favourite examples of how much music is a part of the human condition is the fact that musical examples were sent out in that space craft to look for other forms of life in the universe. So those scientists thought that music represented humanity. I think it does.

MDM: How important is being versatile in art and music?

LAURA KARPMAN: It depends on what you are doing. My teacher Milton Babbitt, although he knows everything there is to know about jazz and Broadway, is very narrow in the stylistic parameters of his work. But for film composers, it’s important to be versatile. It’s important to be able to address all of the issues that come up in dramatic pieces. In ASK YOUR MAMA, Langston Hughes says exactly how the music should sound, often asking for well-known songs and requesting rapid stylistic changes from German lieder to traditional 12-bar blues.  This world where Strauss’s Die Nacht and Miles Davis’ So What live side-by-side, is a world in which I feel very much at home.

MDM: What would you say has been your biggest professional challenge to date?

LAURA KARPMAN: I would have to say the aforementioned piece, ASK YOUR MAMA, a multimedia hybrid opera on the brilliant text by Langston Hughes, has been my biggest challenge and accomplishment. A close second to scoring Steven Spielberg’s 20-hour miniseries TAKEN.

MDM: What are the main differences in approach that working for such different industries like film, theatre and video-games require?

LAURA KARPMAN: I approach every single thing I do with the same rigor and intellectual process. There are differences in these platforms that have to be addressed, for example, in a lot of videogames there are no inherent timings, whereas in film, timing is everything.

MDM: You are a perfect example of extraordinary professional achievement, but, do you feel that you may have had to work a lot harder than your male colleagues or have you seen this problem reflected in the lives of other female colleagues and if so, what do you think about this?

LAURA KARPMAN: I am a hard worker, and I don’t really know how hard other people work or what that means, but I will say this – there is a lot of sexism in Hollywood. It’s documented. Everybody knows about it. I’ve seen it firsthand. So is that a challenge? Yes. Has that created boundaries in my career? I think so. But sexism is very quiet – it’s hard to see, it’s hard to explain, and people don’t want to hear about it.

MDM: Your favourite own composition, the composition that not only was amazingly suited to a particular project but which also moves your heart every time you listen to it would be…

LAURA KARPMAN: ASK YOUR MAMA. But I have to say this, I know it may sound insanely egotistical, but I really love my music. I’m proud of it, but I also just really enjoy listening to it.

MDM: A visual artist who you have always hoped to collaborate with and a music artist with whom you have a special creative chemistry would be…

LAURA KARPMAN: Visual Artist: There are a number of visual artists whom I find deeply inspiring. I have to say that Suzanne McClelland’s text paintings are deep and conceptual and she and I need to collaborate. I recently contacted Catherine Opie about working with her for a piece I’m writing for the LA Opera, ONE TEN, an opera about a freeway. Her work is really powerful and she’s another interesting creator with whom I’d love to work. I also love Mark Bradford.

Musical Artist: Last spring I went to the New Orleans Jazz Festival and basically I’m willing to drop everything if I could just write a concerto for brass bands, Mardi Gras Indians, and orchestra.

MDM: Which do you think are the most pressing social issues in the US at the moment and what do you think of any action taken or lack thereof?

LAURA KARPMAN: Education. Racism. Sexism. I think we are making real strides with gay issues, and I think that the next generation may eradicate homophobia, at least in large urban areas. But I think racism persists terribly. Its economic impact is profound and infects the lifeblood of this country.

MDM: Laura, please, we need to share with our readers where and when they can attend an ASK YOUR MAMA concert, it's an amazing piece with a    luxury cast and, of course, your wonderful composition. Would you be so kind as to share this information here?

LAURA KARPMAN: Good news- we are about to record the piece. I can’t give away all of the details yet, but the recording is going to take an innovative approach, and it means that ASK YOUR MAMA will become available to a wide audience, not just those nearby Carnegie Hall…

MDM: Apart from the innovative and exciting “Melting Pot”, do you have any other future projects and collaborations in line?

LAURA KARPMAN: I am working on ONE TEN, an opera about the 110 Freeway commissioned by the LA Opera. I am also collaborating with The Kitchen Sisters on a new project for the Cabrillo Festival for 2012. I’m working on getting an opera off the ground with New York Times columnist Gail Collins. More on that soon as well.

MDM: Again, it’s been our pleasure to count with your participation for this interview. We are going to be anxiously anticipating the premier of “Melting Pot”! (Just in case we have not expressed our interest on this project enough...).

LAURA KARPMAN: So glad you love "Melting Pot". It very much was the study for ASK YOUR MAMA and I’m also looking forward to developing "Melting Pot further".

Thanks so much for the great questions!