Life

Gladys Nordenstrom was born in Mora

Mora

-People:* Alberto J. Mora , General Counsel of the United States Navy * Alfonso Mora , Venezuelan former tennis player* Bruno Mora , Italian football player and coach* Cristian Mora , Ecuadorian football goalkeeper...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

. She studied music at the Institute of Fine Arts at Hamline University

Hamline University

-Red Wing location :Hamline was named in honor of Leonidas Lent Hamline, a bishop of the Methodist Church whose interest in the frontier led him to donate $25,000 toward the building of an institution of higher learning in what was then the territory of Minnesota. Today, a statue of Bishop Hamline...

 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she received Bachelors and Masters degrees. She studied under and then married Austrian composer Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

 there in 1950. After completing her studies, Nordenstrom worked as an elementary school teacher until she moved with Krenek to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. In the following years, she accompanied her husband to visiting professorships in various locations and sometimes collaborated on works. After his death in 1991, she founded the Ernst Krenek Institute in 1998 and the private foundation Krems die Ernst Krenek in 2004 in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. In 2006 Gladys Nordenstrom was awarded the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Works

Selected works include:

• Rondo for Flute and Piano (premiere 1948)
• El Greco fantasy for strings (UA 1966)
• Swift is death to strike a man In memoriam RF Kennedy (1968)
• Work for Orchestra III (1974/75)
• Time 24