Starr Parodi - Composer
Starr loves to create music that is powerful, epic and driving - like her re-make of the James Bond Theme for MGM, her score for Michael B. Jordan’s animated gen:LOCK series on HBO MAX or her theme for Transformers: Rescue Bots, which has been translated into 15 languages. She’s just as passionate about creating intimate, moody, vibey and uniquely melodic music that grabs listeners hearts like her score for the NYT bestseller, The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, and the Grammy winning Women Warriors:The Voices of Change. As a Steinway Artist, she has garnered multiple solo piano Record of the Year awards and her recordings have been featured on NPR, Classical KUSC, KCRW, iHeartRadio & Sirius XM.
After losing literally everything she owned in the Palisades fires of January 2025, Parodi immediately dove in to begin work on a newly commissioned piece, Riptide — musically reliving her experience swimming into a powerful rip current in the South Pacific. Riptide is a visceral meditation on surrender and human resilience, and became a metaphor for being pulled into a terrifying situation and coming out the other side with new-found insights about learning to let go. Recorded by the ROCO orchestra in Houston, Riptide was featured August 2026 on American Public Media - Performance Today across all their US stations.
Starr first caught the public eye playing keyboards as part of the house band on the hit late-night Arsenio Hall Show for its entire five and a half year run and she has performed, toured or recorded with treasured artists including Carole King, George Howard, Celine Dion, BB King, Whitney Houston among many others.
In 2023, Starr won a Grammy as a producer and featured artist for Kitt Wakeley’s An Adoption Story, she served as score producer for the 2024 Grammy-winning Global album Alkebulan II, and earned a 2026 Grammy nomination for Seven Seasons with the London Royal Philharmonic. Her 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.
Beyond her personal creative work, Starr is 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, remains a member of their Advisory Board, and she’s a frequent guest lecturer at top-tier institutions including NYU, USC, UCLA, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Berklee.
A trailblazer onstage and in the studio, Starr 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.