was born in Whiteriver, Arizona. Ortman was adopted at birth and grew up in Alton, Illinois. Ortman grew up in a musical family. Laura Ortman's mother, Terri Ortman was a pianist who managed a youth orchestra for 20 years. Her sister played the flute and harp, her brother played the french horn. Her grandmother, Mrs. Hummer was a symphony violinist in Des Moines, Iowa Laura Ortman describes her grandmother as influencing her taste in classical music introducing her to musicians such as Sibelius, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Bartok. As a teen, Ortman was a part of the St. Louis Youth Symphony. Laura Ortman is a full-blooded White Mountain Apache. In 2001, Ortman reconnected with her birth family in Arizona. The timing was significant as it was one month prior to the 9/11 attack in New York, where Ortman was residing and it was also seven months prior to the death of Terri Ortman, her adopted mother. Ortman has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas, where she studied drawing, painting, sculpture and performance art. In 1997 Ortman moved to New York City. After moving to New York she began doing improvisational music for modern dancers, soon attracting the attention of the New York Native community. While Ortman lives in busy Brooklyn, New York, she enjoys nature and walks in Prospect Park, as well as hiking and camping in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains.
's practice has a strong connection to visual art, prior to moving to New York, Ortman states: “I used to try to create painting and installation work about being isolated, of being singular," she says. "Then I started making my own music for the installations, to fill them up. Then, at last, I decided that the sound was what was really moving me." She describes her music as "sculpting sound."
Bands
In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble. It performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters. Curtis' film was the first silent feature film to star an all Native American cast.
received $20,000 in 2017 from the Jerome Foundation to create of a "collaborative collage" an Indigenous New York City Walking Soundtrack, that fused spoken word, song, din, movement, air, whispers and atmosphere, capturing a changing and personal Native American New York experience. She captured atmospheric recordings using the mobile recording unit she created.
Awards and Grants
2017 Jerome Foundation Fellowship
2016 Art Matters Foundation Grant
2016 National Artist Fellowship Native Arts and Culture Foundation
