Album Notes

Fluent in everything "from Bird to Bach," Laura Karpman draws from jazz, classical & world music to create her scores for The Living Edens. 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 five additional nominations.

Laura Karpman is one of few women scoring film and television, as well as maintaining a vibrant career in concert music. Karpman's other 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. Karpman received her doctorate form Juilliard where she studied with Milton Babbitt.

Karpman recently scored Steven Spielberg's and Emmy winning miniseries TAKEN for DreamWorks and the Sci-Fi Channel. She just received an Emmy nomination for the score to Showtime's series, ODYSSEY 5, produced by Manny Coot and starring Peter Weller. Based on her huge success with the score for TAKEN, Karpman was brought on to score EVERQUEST II, the second incarnation of Sony's smash hit Massive Multi-User Online Video Game, EVERQUEST. Karpman's recent film and television work includes FATHERS AND SONS, an independent ensemble drama written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, Jarred Rapp port, and Rob Sperra.

Karpman has also had a distinguished career as a composer of concert music. Her works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Tangle wood Music Festival. Among her recent commissions is ABOUT JOSHUA, a trio for flute, harp, viola and mezzo - soprano for the Debussy Trio premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Other recent concert commissions include COMMON TONE, for avant-garde electric violist Martha Mooke, an untitled bassoon concerto for Lumír Vanek, principal bassoonist for the Prague Symphony Orchestra, ROUNDS FOR VIOLA AND PIANO for Evan Wilson, principal violist of the LA Philharmonic, PLUM SUGAR for the new West Hollywood Orchestra, and a song cycle for Boulder's Sound Circle. She has had commissions by the Concordia, the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony and her works have also been performed by the Lydian String Quartet, The Women's Philharmonic, and the Richmond Symphony.

A frequent composer for the theatre, Karpman recently completed her first opera, ESCAPE, originally commissioned for the LA Opera. Her next commission for Los Angeles' classical theatre company, A Noise Within, will be the underscore for Euripides ELECTRA, scheduled for March 2004.