[2] Her father was Errol Parker (né Raphaël Schecroun), an Algerian-born jazz musician; her mother was a classical pianist.
[5] Lauten's music was always a combination of two contradictory streams, one a cloudy, beatless stasis derived from minimalism, the other a neoclassical attachment to tonal melody and ostinato.
Her 1987 opera The Death of Don Juan—feminist tract and Zen meditation combined—was one of the major postminimalist works of the 1980s;[6] it was revived in April 2005 at Franklin Pierce College (in New Hampshire), directed by Robert Lawson.
[7] Her neoclassical tendency blossomed into a full neo-baroque idiom in her Deus ex Machina Cycle for voices and Baroque ensemble (1999).
Smoothly suave but with a gentle rock beat, the work pioneered a mixture of genres by combining vocal soloists from three styles: classical, Broadway, and gospel.
[9] OrfReo, an opera for Baroque ensemble, was premiered at Merkin Hall by the Queen's Chamber Band, who also included Lauten's The Architect in their CD New Music Alive (Capstone, 2004).