Born in Wisconsin, Gloria Coates began composing and experimenting with overtones and clusters at the age of nine. She considers both Alexander Tcherepnin, who encouraged her composing since she was 16, and Otto Luening, to have been her “gurus.” Her studies took her from Chicago and Louisiana (with a Masters Degree in composition), to New York’s Cooper Union Art School, and Columbia University for postgraduate studies in music composition. While maintaining a residence in the United States, Gloria Coates has lived in Munich, Germany since 1969 where she has promoted American music by organizing a German-American Music Series (1971–1984), writing musicological articles, and producing broadcasts for the radio stations of Munich, Cologne, and Bremen. From 1975 to 1983 she taught for the University of Wisconsin’s International Programs, initiating the first music programs in London and Munich. She has been invited to lecture on her music with performances in India, Poland, Germany, Ireland, England, and the United States at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, and Boston Universities. A paramount figure in modern symphonic form, Coates’ symphonic works have been hailed by Ludwig Finscher as “the spirit of an expressionistic-apocalyptic-mystical world view.”