Starr Parodi
The 2020s have been an exciting and creative decade for Grammy® award-winning composer, artist & producer, Starr Parodi - with films and shows on Apple TV+, HBO Max, and Netflix, commissioned orchestral and choral works, and multiple awards including Grammy® nominations on three Grammy® winning projects. Starr has had musical performances alongside some of the world’s most beloved and talented actors and artists, and her music has been featured on NPR, BBC radio, KCRW, Classical KUSC, SiriusXM and iHEART Radio.
Her scoring credits include The Storied Life Of A.J. Fikry ((Netflix), Michael B. Jordan’s post-apocalyptic gen:LOCK (HBO Max), Transformers: Rescue Bots (Apple TV+), G.I. Joe Renegades (Apple TV+), Bert Stern:Original Madman (Amazon Prime), The Starter Wife (NBC/Universal), Duck & Goose (Apple TV+), Conversations With Other Women (Amazon Prime), The Division (Lifetime - John Hamm/Taraji Henson), and hundreds of Hollywood's most iconic and visible film trailers (Rogue One, Last Samurai, James Bond, Mission: Impossible II, Zoolander, Harry Potter, Dreamgirls, Night at the Museum, X-Men 3, United Artists Logo, Sony Imageworks Logo, etc.). Her darkly innovative production/arrangement of the JAMES BOND Theme (RIAA Gold Record) was credited by Forbes magazine as "reinventing the modern action movie trailer.”
Starr won a Grammy® award (2023) Best Classical Compendium for her work as a producer, featured artist and arranger on Kitt Wakeley’s An Adoption Story. She was the score producer with the London Royal Philharmonic for the 2024 Grammy® winning album Alkebulan II, and was again a Grammy® nominee in 2026 for her work on the Classical Compendium Album Seven Seasons, featuring the London Royal Philharmonic and vocal soloist Janai Brugger. Other honors include a Hollywood Music in Media Award (HMMA-2021), SHE ROCKS - VISION Award (2021), BMI IMPACT Award (2022) and an SCL Jury Award for her work on Women Warriors.
On the concert stage, Starr’s 2025 orchestral work, Riptide—commissioned by the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) and featured on American Public Media's Performance Today—is a deeply moving, visceral orchestral meditation on surrender and human resilience. Riptide draws a profound parallel between two life-altering events in Parodi’s life: a terrifying, firsthand encounter with a powerful riptide in French Polynesia in the 1990s, and a recent personal tragedy—the devastating 2025 Los Angeles wildfire that destroyed her Pacific Palisades home, studio, and her beloved 1928 Steinway B that began its life on the MGM Scoring Stage. Rather than a narrative of fighting against disaster, Riptide serves as a gorgeous musical thesis on the power of "going with the flow" and stepping into the unknown. This composition translates the terrifying pull of the current into an orchestral swell that ultimately gives way to hope, inner strength, and peaceful surrender.
Another centerpiece of Parodi’s concert repertoire is her composition The Joy Of The Waters. Premiering at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, this vibrant neoclassical composition won the Hollywood Music in Media Award (HMMA) for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, and was featured on the 2022 Grammy®-winning album Women Warriors: The Voices of Change. This piece captures a sense of profound hope, momentum, and renewal. Parodi also made history as the first woman composer to have her orchestral works performed in the 90+ year history of the Festival of Arts: Pageant of the Masters where she remains a featured composer.
Starr is a Steinway Artist and her unique approach to recording solo piano has been widely praised and honored with multiple “Solo Piano Album of the Year” awards for both The Heart Of Frida and Common Places. Lauded by KCRW’s radio host Chris Douridas “This (Common Places) deeply passionate and beautiful recording is one of the best albums of the year.”
Parodi first caught the public eye playing keyboards as part of the house band on the hit late-night Arsenio Hall Show and she has performed, toured or recorded with treasured artists including Carole King, George Howard, Celine Dion, BB King, Al Green, Phil Keaggy & Whitney Houston among countless others.
Beyond her personal creative work, Starr has become a prominent voice in the Los Angeles media‑music community and is a dedicated advocate for equity and representation in music. She served as President of the Alliance for Women Film Composers (March 2019- March 2021) where she helped build mentorship programs, international outreach, and visibility for women composers. Starr continues to be active on their Advisory Board and frequently lectures at top-tier institutions including NYU, USC, UCLA, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Berklee.
At the invitation of The New York Times, Starr conducted a live performance of To All The Little Girls, a music video celebrating the potential of young women that she produced and arranged with Oscar winning filmmaker Terry Sanders for the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center.
A trailblazer onstage and in the studio, she is a dynamic presence in contemporary music: a composer who balances precision and imagination, a pianist with emotional depth, a producer with creative insight, and a leader dedicated to fostering musical opportunities.
“Parodi’s musical sense “goes way beyond creative. Words that come to mind while listening include imaginative, courageous, dynamic, passionate, gutsy, pensive, restrained, and euphoric.…” - Oxford University Press author and former Keyboard Magazine editor Mark Vail