Gladys Mercedes Nordenstrom (May 23, 1924 – July 5, 2016) was an American composer.

Gladys Nordenstrom was born in Mora, Minnesota. She studied music at the Institute of Fine Arts at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she received bachelor's and master's degrees. She studied under and then married Austrian composer Ernst Krenek there in 1950. After completing her studies, Nordenstrom worked as an elementary school teacher until she moved with Krenek to California. 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, Austria. In 2006 Gladys Nordenstrom was awarded the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria. She died on July 5, 2016 in Palm Springs, California.
 

ERNST KRENEK (aka Thornton Winsloe)1900 - 1991

Ernst Krenek (August 23, 1900 – December 22, 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now (1939), a study of Johannes Ockeghem (1953), and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music (1974). Krenek wrote two pieces using the pseudonym Thornton Winsloe. WIKIPEDIA BIO

Krenek was born in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary) as Ernst Křenek (Czech pronunciation: [ˈkr̝ɛnɛk]) as the son of a Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army. He studied there and in Berlin with Franz Schreker before working in a number of German opera houses as conductor. During World War I, Krenek was drafted into the Austrian army, but he was stationed in Vienna, allowing him to go on with his musical studies. In 1922 he met Alma Mahler, widow of the late Gustav Mahler, and her daughter, Anna, to whom he dedicated his Symphony No. 2, and whom he married in March 1924. That marriage ended in divorce before its first anniversary.