Gloria Kannenberg Coates was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, on October 10, 1938, the middle child of Wisconsin State Senator Roland Kannenberg and Natalie Zanon Kannenberg. Her involvement in the arts began at an early age where in Wausau she studied voice, played piano and composed music, as well as participating in the theater and writing for her school newspaper. After finishing high school, Coates left Wisconsin to attend Monticello College in Godfrey, Illinois. There she continued her activities in theater, music, and writing, by participating in the Monticello College Choir as well as acting and writing poetry. After her experiences in summer theater programs in Central City, Colorado, and at the Brookside Playhouse in Petersburg, Pennsylvania, she left Monticello to pursue a life in the arts. She relocated to Milwaukee where she attended the Wisconsin College of Music, studied opera with Nene Baalstad, and met composer Alexander Tcherepnin, with whom she studied privately in Milwaukee and later in Chicago and at the Salzburg Mozarteum. She later lived in Chicago and attended DePaul University Theater School and the Goodman Theatre, while studying with David Itkin. She also studied voice at the Chicago Musical College and acted with the Chicago Stage Guild. During this period she also acted at the Flat Rock Playhouse in North Carolina.
Coates' pursuit of the arts eventually led her to New York City, where she studied acting and voice privately, and where she studied art at the Cooper Union. She also played the lead in the off-Broadway musical Dakota.
In 1959 Coates married attorney Frank Coates Jr., and they settled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She continued her studies at Louisiana State University (LSU), earning a bachelor's degree in voice, art, composition, and theater as well as a master's degree in composition and musicology. At LSU she studied with Helen Gunderson and Kenneth Klaus. Later she did post-graduate work with Jack Beeson and Otto Luening at Columbia University in New York. She also continued her involvement in the theater, participating in productions at LSU. Her activities in community theater during this period included composing and acting for the Baton Rouge Little Theater and writing and directing church pageants and children's productions. She also composed for the Louisiana Festival of Music; wrote for the Louisiana State-Times as an art, music, and drama critic; and produced and moderated a daily television program.
After ten years of marriage, Coates and her husband divorced, and she sailed for Germany with their daughter, Alexandra. Her activities in Germany have concentrated on musical composition and painting. Most prominent have been producing and organizing the German-American Contemporary Music Series in Munich from 1971 to 1983, and moderating and commentating on German radio programs in Cologne and Bremen. Her compositions gained recognition with the symphony Music on Open Strings that premiered at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1978. It proved to be the most discussed work at the festival and throughout the European press. In 1979 she was commissioned to write an orchestral work for the 25th anniversary of the Milwaukee Symphony. In addition to being the first non-socialist composer to compose for the East Berlin Festival, Coates inaugurated the University of Wisconsin's International Programs in Music series, and won numerous honors for her compositions. She has also lectured widely on her life and music all over the world. Recordings of her work are available on Naxos and New World Records.
There have been more than 600 performances of her compositions all over the world including March Music (Berlin Festival), New Music America (New York), Montepulciano Festival (Italy), Dresden Festival, Warsaw Autumn, Dartington (England) and the Aspekte Festival Salzburg, with artists such as the Kronos Quartet, the Kreutzer Quartet, and the Crash Ensemble Dublin. Orchestras to have performed her works include the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Polish Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Radio Bucharest Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra of San Francisco.
Coates has written 15 symphonies and other orchestral pieces, nine string quartets, chamber music, numerous songs, solo pieces, electronic music, and music for the theatre. She is also an accomplished and award-winning visual artist who has studied at the Cooper Union Art School.
