Existing comment:
Cultural Ambassador
Privately and through her foundation, Coolidge subsidized chamber music performances around the country and abroad. She often spent winters in California, and both Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area especially benefitted from her largesse. In 1937, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. Coolidge sponsored a series of concerts there featuring the renowned Kolisch Quartet playing Beethoven and Schoenberg, whose third and fourth string quartets were Coolidge commissions. She studied composition with Domenico Brescia (1866–1939) at Mills College and could be heard in concert as pianist in her own chamber music works. |