A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is based in New York. Her work spans recorded albums, live performances, and film and art soundtracks. An inventive violinist and multi-instrumentalist, she works with Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. Her practice bridges experimental sound, performance, and visual art, creating immersive sonic environments and expansive field recordings.

Ortman has collaborated with artists including Tony Conrad, Raven Chacon, Okkyung Lee, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, and Kronos Quartet, and performs as part of the trio In Defense of Memory. In 2008, She founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.

She has presented her work at major institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Venice Biennale, Museum of Modern Art, MASS MoCA, and Centre Pompidou. She is the recipient of the 2025 Pioneer Works Music Residency, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, and the 2014–15 Rauschenberg Residency, amongst many others.