Coston played for national meetings of the NAACP and the National Association of Negro Musicians as a child.[6] She was mentioned in The Crisis when she was twelve years old,[2] after she was a finalist in a statewide piano competition in Indiana.[6] At age 18, she taught music appreciation at an Indianapolis summer school sponsored by the YWCA.[7]
Coston gave recitals in Atlanta in 1940,[8] and in Knoxville in 1941.[9] "Miss Coston displayed a pleasing tone, dexterity, and fine shading," wrote Atlanta critic Gamewell Valentine in 1940.[10] She also performed in radio broadcasts.[11] In 1949[12][13] and 1953, she was guest soloist with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, playing for a non-segregated audience.[14][15][16]
Coston taught piano at Spelman College in 1939,[8][17] and Howard University in Washington, D.C.,[4] Dillard University in New Orleans[18] and at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania,[12] all historically-black schools (HBCUs). Her students included Ellis Marsalis Jr.,[19][20] who studied with her from 1950 to 1951,[21] and Geneva Handy Southall (at Dillard).[22]
Personal life
Coston married physician Arnold Hamilton Maloney Jr. in 1942.[5] They had three children. She died in 1968, at the age of 51, in Chicago. Ther is a scrapbook of her correspondence and ephemera in the Western Michigan University Archives & Regional History Collections.[23]
