Mildred Josephine Cozzens Ewald Turner (February 23, 1897 – June 9, 1992)
was an American composer, pianist, and singer who published her music under the name Mildred Cozzens Turner.
Biography
Turner was born in
Pueblo, Colorado, to Harmon and J. Wehrhane Cozzens. She married Louis Ewald in 1917, then married Huntington McDonald Turner in 1934.
Turner graduated from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Music and also studied in
Geneva, Switzerland. Her teachers included
Emil Leibling,
William Benton Overstreet
William Benton Overstreet (April 3, 1888 – June 23, 1935) was an American songwriter, bandleader and pianist in the early twentieth century.
He was born in Atchison, Kansas. He directed McCabe's Georgia Troubadours in 1910, and by the mid-1910s ...
and Corneille and Francis Schwinger.
Turner sang with the
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, conducted a boys' orchestra and worked as a public school supervisor in
Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Mineral Point is a city in Iowa County, Wisconsin, Iowa County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 2,581 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The city is located within the Mineral Point (town), Wisconsin, Town of Mineral Point ...
, before moving to New York, where she was living when she married Huntington McDonald Turner in 1934. Her extensive overseas travels inspired many of her songs.
Turner was a member of the
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...
(ASCAP). Her LP recordings included CAPIT T 1152 and DECCA 9 31057. In addition to songs she wrote for amateur theater,
her vocal compositions included:
*"Answer"
*"Dalmatian Lullaby"
*"Galaxy"
*"Geisha"
*"Hawaii Calls at Twilight"
*"I'm the Spell of the Moon"
*"I Wish They Didn't Mean Goodbye"
*"My Charro"
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, Mildred Cozzens
1897 births
1992 deaths
20th-century American composers
20th-century women composers
20th-century American women musicians
American women composers
ASCAP composers and authors
People from Pueblo, Colorado
Musicians from Colorado
University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Music alumni