“When I was 7,” Alexandra Coates stated by e mail, “she was hit by another skiing student and was paralyzed in the upper back.”

Ms. Coates gave up singing and centered on portray, one other curiosity, together with music. She advised The Irish Times that within the early Seventies, amid the terrorist assaults at the Olympics in Munich and the violence of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Munich constructing the place she was residing was considered a attainable terrorist goal. She moved her music manuscripts out of the constructing however continued to dwell there. (Her daughter was residing along with her father within the United States.) She was, she stated, sending a kind of subliminal message to herself.

“It was not until several months later that I realized that that music was so important, it was more important than my life,” she stated.

From then on, music grew to become her main focus. For years Ms. Coates curated a collection in Germany dedicated to American up to date music. Her personal compositional output coated a variety. Her daughter stated that for a time Ms. Coates held a job giving excursions of the Dachau focus camp to members of the U.S. Army. Among the works these excursions impressed was her “Voices of Women in Wartime,” a setting of writings by ladies underneath numerous circumstances throughout World War II.

In addition to her daughter, Ms. Coates is survived by a brother, Philip Kannenberg; a sister, Natalie Tackett; and a grandson.

If her work wasn’t typically heard within the United States, critics and different writers admired her originality. Simon Cummings, who writes the contemporary music blog 5:4, stated by e mail that Ms. Coates had set herself aside from different out-of-the-mainstream composers as “one who doesn’t merely surprise or amuse you when you encounter their music for the first time, but who completely knocks you off your feet, and moves you very deeply and powerfully, even if, at the time, you’re not really sure why you’re experiencing such a strong reaction.”

In 2014, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed referred to as Ms. Coates merely “our last maverick.”