Biography
Gloria Coates, who originated in the United States, conducted the bulk of her professional activity while based in Germany. A highly productive creator of music, she worked extensively to introduce American compositions to audiences in her adopted nation, and she made periodic returns to the United States in later decades to serve as a lecturer.
Born Gloria Kannenberg on October 10, 1933, in Wausau, Wisconsin, she was the daughter of a vocalist mother and a father active in politics. She displayed musical aptitude from childhood, performing songs on the radio at an early age, yet she also turned to composition while still young, claiming victory in a National Federation of Music Clubs contest during her early teens. She completed undergraduate work at Cooper Union in New York with a concentration in music. Composer Alexander Tcherepnin exerted a strong influence after she met him in 1952; she studied privately with him and subsequently enrolled in his summer courses at the Salzburg Mozarteum. In 1959 she married attorney Francis Coates.
She earned a master’s degree at the University of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. For a time she worked in New York and Chicago as a singer, actor, director, writer, and visual artist while taking postgraduate classes at Columbia University with Otto Luening and Jack Beeson. In 1969 she relocated to Munich with her young daughter to pursue vocal studies, but a serious skiing accident in 1971 curtailed that plan and prompted her to devote herself fully to composition thereafter; she nonetheless developed a lasting attachment to Germany and remained there for most of the rest of her life.
She launched a German-American contemporary music series in Munich in 1973 and directed it until 1981. The programs brought a substantial quantity of American music to West Germany, where such works had previously been uncommon. She also obtained performances outside the series; her composition Music for Open Strings, also known as Symphony No. 1, was presented at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1978, becoming one of the few contemporary American pieces heard in the former East Bloc countries under Communist governance. She was named a finalist in the Koussevitsky Competition for composers in 1986.
Her catalogue proved extensive, comprising 16 symphonies, 11 string quartets, further orchestral scores, and several song cycles. By the mid-2020s approximately 45 of her works had appeared on recordings, among them many of the symphonies and string quartets. She returned to the United States on a part-time basis during the 1990s, delivering lectures at Harvard University, Brown University, Boston University, and the University of Wisconsin. She died in Munich on August 19, 2023.
Born Gloria Kannenberg on October 10, 1933, in Wausau, Wisconsin, she was the daughter of a vocalist mother and a father active in politics. She displayed musical aptitude from childhood, performing songs on the radio at an early age, yet she also turned to composition while still young, claiming victory in a National Federation of Music Clubs contest during her early teens. She completed undergraduate work at Cooper Union in New York with a concentration in music. Composer Alexander Tcherepnin exerted a strong influence after she met him in 1952; she studied privately with him and subsequently enrolled in his summer courses at the Salzburg Mozarteum. In 1959 she married attorney Francis Coates.
She earned a master’s degree at the University of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. For a time she worked in New York and Chicago as a singer, actor, director, writer, and visual artist while taking postgraduate classes at Columbia University with Otto Luening and Jack Beeson. In 1969 she relocated to Munich with her young daughter to pursue vocal studies, but a serious skiing accident in 1971 curtailed that plan and prompted her to devote herself fully to composition thereafter; she nonetheless developed a lasting attachment to Germany and remained there for most of the rest of her life.
She launched a German-American contemporary music series in Munich in 1973 and directed it until 1981. The programs brought a substantial quantity of American music to West Germany, where such works had previously been uncommon. She also obtained performances outside the series; her composition Music for Open Strings, also known as Symphony No. 1, was presented at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1978, becoming one of the few contemporary American pieces heard in the former East Bloc countries under Communist governance. She was named a finalist in the Koussevitsky Competition for composers in 1986.
Her catalogue proved extensive, comprising 16 symphonies, 11 string quartets, further orchestral scores, and several song cycles. By the mid-2020s approximately 45 of her works had appeared on recordings, among them many of the symphonies and string quartets. She returned to the United States on a part-time basis during the 1990s, delivering lectures at Harvard University, Brown University, Boston University, and the University of Wisconsin. She died in Munich on August 19, 2023.
Albums