Composer Profile: Laura Karpman
Working with composer Laura Karpman in her oceanside home and studio might look much more like being on a tropical holiday than going to work. But looks would be deceiving, as this second-generation Angeleno is one of the busiest composers around. I’ve spent the last few years helping Laura juggle a busy composing schedule for films, television shows, documentaries, theater, video games, and compositions for the concert hall. Added to that are her UCLA teaching duties at both the Herb Alpert School of Music and the School of Theater, Film, and Television. During this time, I’ve also tried to facilitate a more leisurely family life for Laura and her spouse, composer Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, and their 13-month-old son, Benjamin.
Karpman’s new work for Pacific Serenades, Different Lanes, is scored for string quartet and two iPads (performing a visual accompaniment). She describes the piece as a “follow up” to Steve Reich’s well-known chamber work Different Trains. Noting her Los Angeles heritage in Different Lanes, Karpman has decided to pay homage to our “beloved freeways.” There will also be a “touch of film added to the mix,” she says. “After all, what is Los Angeles without freeways and film?”
Like its predecessor, Different Lanes is a multimedia experience. Karpman notes that the two iPads are “kind of an experiment,” where the visual and non-live aspects of the piece play a significant roll, however, “no more significant than any individual member of the quartet.” Those familiar with Karpman’s work know that the combination of live music with prerecorded audio and visuals is a hallmark of her diverse style. She notes, “I have always lead a bipolar musical life. When I was getting my doctorate at Juilliard with Milton Babbitt I was also going out at night playing and singing jazz in night clubs.” For Karpman, little distinction is made between “serious” composition and other kinds of music making. Also, as an artist, she often tackles topics of cultural and historical significance. “I very much wanted to write a piece that was about Southern California,” she says, noting the aesthetic and mission behind Pacific Serenades, for commissioning artists who live and work in the greater Los Angeles area.
Karpman describes Different Lanes as a piece in five movements, or lack thereof, submitting that often our freeways do not necessarily “move” so well. Briefly outlining the piece, she mentions the first part is an homage to the 110 freeway (the tempo being set at quarter = 110, of course). “This is a movement exploring that scary, wild ride of the 110 heading towards Pasadena from downtown.” For the second movement, Karpman has written a romantic depiction of the “sleek and sexy” carpool lane bridge that connects the 105 and the 110. The third movement is based on another favorite freeway of Karpman’s, the brief Richard Nixon freeway, the 90, of Marina Del Rey. To her, the 90 seems “interrupted like Nixon’s presidency.” The fourth movement is dedicated to the 405, and for Karpman the motto of this movement is “stop and go and stop.” Different Lanes ends with a fifth movement, which Karpman has affectionately titled The Day the Earth Stood Still, Carmaggeddon! There are film references in each movement too, she says, but those will be “saved for the performance.”
Given that a running theme for Pacific Serenades over the past half-dozen years is “crossing boundaries,” Karpman commented, “I think that one of my goals is to find beauty where so many of us think there is none, and that is on our freeways. The ‘crossing boundaries’ connection is pretty clear: that is what freeways do, and it also is what multimedia does.” These are all “tendrils” of the same subject for Karpman, and for this composer musical boundaries were made to be crossed.
Pacific Serenades eagerly anticipates the premiere of Different Lanes as the opener for its 26th season.
Jeff Kryka is a composer who recently finished his PhD in composition at UCLA, where he now serves as a lecturer, teaching a first-year music theory class. In 2010, Pacific Serenades commissioned and premiered his string quintet, Quintessence.
