On March 7, 2020, Dr. Edgar Coons of New York University was honored at Ted Coons Festschrift was presented at the NYU King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in honor of his 90th year. A Festchrift is a volume or archive compiled in a celebration as a tribute to a scholar, writer, artist or accomplished figure, producing materials consisting of articles, essays, presentations related to the honoree's work and career. As a pioneer in neuro research, Dr. Coons career has produced leading researchers and scholars who have uncovered new terrain with regard to the brain and its functions. He himself has produced many breakthrough studies, and his students have gone on to distinguish themseles as leaders in this field.
This celebration was on the eve of the Pandemic crisis. Even at this meeting, participants were touching elbows rather than shaking hands. The participants are too numerous to identify here, so I will contextualize it with how my relationship with this remarkable man led to me presenting at this celebration.
I was invited by Ted to be a Co-Sponsor for The First International Conference on MIND, BODY AND THE PERFORMING ARTS in 1985 as I was serving as Director and Chair of NYU Steinhardt's Music and Performing Arts. (At that time, the school was still known as the School of Education, then, School of Education, Health, Nursing, and Arts Performance (SEHNAP), and finally, Steinhardt.) I had begun my career at NYU with first contact in 1968, and Ted had begun his career in the School of Arts and Sciences a few years earlier than that. The conference was the first of its kind and it made news, attracting a number of outstanding artists, educators, doctors, and researchers. It was a series of coincidences that led to my meeting Dr. Coons, and I was fortunate that these events led to establishing a life-long friendship that was often shared at NOHO STAR, a restaurant that was near NYU, populated by artists, writers, students, musicians, and celebrities. It no longer exists, and we shifted our times to LAYFETTE, a restaurant a block from the NOHO STAR.
Coincidences shape the future.It was on the basis of that Mind Body conference that I was invited to share the findings as part of Ted's 90th Year Festschift. If it had not been for the conference, I likely would have never met Ted. I met Ted through a doctoral student who had come to our department to pursue a PhD in Music Performance. The PhD in Music Performance was one of the first programs I created when I joined NYU. I was brought to NYU by. Dr. Jerrold Ross who had been the president of the New York College of Music. While at Columbia University studying for my doctorate, I became the composition student of David Simon, who also happened to be the registar of the New York College of Music. David had been impressed by our conversations about higher education. He recommended me to Dr. Ross. The PhD in Music Performance was the first of its kind, and it attracted extraordinary musicians who were also interested in the research. One such student was John Kella, the principal violist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His registration in Ted's research class led to discussions that resulted in creating the conference and brought me into partnership with Ted Coons.
As we rode in a taxi up Sixth Avenue for a fundraising event for the festival, we discovered our mtual past.
TED: I don't know much about you. Where are you from?
JVG: You wouldn't know it. It's just a town in Texas.
TED: I might know. Where?
JVG: Amarillo...
TED: I know Amarillo. Did you know the Amarillo Conservatory of Music?
JVG: Yes.
TED: Did you study at the conservatory?
JVG: Yes.
TED: Well, I also studied at the conservatory. Did you study with Gladys Glenn?
JVG: Why, yes I did.
TED: I also studied with Gladys Glenn. Small world isn't it?
Because Ted is nine years my senior, I was in a different world from his. He was studying at the Conservatory in his teens, when I was just entering grade school, so our worlds never met. Yet, we shared a common background.
Ted's Festchrift was a true celebration, revealing the many layers of talents and achievements that have accrued over the illustrious years of his career. It's impossible to report the full scope of presentations that were unveiled that day. The first presentation by Dr. Richard Young set the tone, as he reviewed Ted's remarkable career that launched the research careers of his many students, including Dr. Young himself. His point was that Ted's contributions are so vast and different, that anyone from the outside might view his work the way six blind men, in the familar proverbial story, tried to describe an elephant by just touching. After an entertaining and enlightening presentation, Dr. Young and his wife, Alice Zhu, presented Dr. Coons with an award that recognized him as a mentor, but as Ms. Zhu described, the word MENTOR does not do justice to a Chinese concept of the Teacher/Mentor/Spiritual Guide that the award represents. Even our cherished words of MAESTRO and MENSCH do not convey the cultural and spiritual import of the word. 
This was a wonderful presentation and the conferring of the award set an appropriate tone for the ongoing celebration, as colleagues and former students and protegees paraded to the podium to honor Ted's extraordinary career as educator, adminstrator, artist, writer, composer, and philosopher. Perhaps the only thing missing was Ted's recent stint as a Film Producer for his former student, Nathan Cutucci, the writer and director for IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS, a film that while having mixed reviews, "marks an impressive debut effort"... "with quite a few engaging twists and turns."
Dr. George Smith, founder of IDSVA (Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts) recently served as the first recipient of Professorship in New Philosophy, created through a generous to donation to IDSVA by Dr. Ted Coons to fund the position. Dr. Smith's book The Artist-Philosopher and New Philosophy maintains that Western Metaphysics has come "an end" as posited by Heidegger. What will emerge is the artist-philosopher who "poeticizes" new philosophy spanning arts in all forms and penetrating culture in all its locations. Dr. Smith recounted his experiences with Ted, and his energy, spontaneity and artistic sensibility. He has with him, Ted's English translation of a Rilke poem which he made for the purpose of setting the poem to music. He invites Ted to share his translation, and we were afforded a sensitive and spontaneous moment through his reading.
Former Protege and student, Dr. David Rosenboom, composer, researcher and the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music at CalArts and Dean of the Department presented his connection with Ted during the early days of The Electric Circus. I had met David as a young, pioneerng artist through a course I developed at NYU called EXPANDED MUSIC, and we visited the artist at his studio and tried to emulate some of his methods and techniques. David Rosenboom's presentation celebrated his relationship with Dr. Coons and also shared works that had been performed in a retrospective of David's prolific 50 years as a composer of new music and creator of countless new techniques in artistic collaboration and new ways of creating music, including ingenious use of bio-feedback in several contexts.
Among the presenters was Dr. Kathleen Riley, who received her PhD in Piano Performance in our department at NYU, while I was Director and Chair. Kathleen was doing pioneering research using the Yamaha Disklavier technology to diagnose differences in interpretation of works, but ultimately to detect physical problems faced by pianists over the span of long careers. Ted played an important role in the formative years of this research, providing her with space for her Yamaha Disklavier as well as advice and support for research projects. From this experience she developed an expertise in identifying what in many instances would be career-ending physical disorders, and providing remedies that saved and extended professional careers. She continues to build on these data through her INTENTION-The Power of the Heart.A moment of reflection as we conclude with Dr. Ted Coon's reading of his translation of Rilke's Poem Sonnet #9.
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