DR. TED COONS' 90th YEAR FESTSCHRIFT

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.

                                            Dr. Ted Coons Reads His Translation of Rilke Poem

DANCE PIONEER MEGAN MINTURN NAVIGATES A PANDEMIC

Megan Minturn is a colleague who has pioneered in what I have called the "otherness" of contemporary dance, a choreographer with courage and originality who uncovers the overlooked and ignored to become an advocate for those who have created something special, but no longer have a voice, or perhaps never did. 
 
I first became aware of Megan when with my colleague, Tom Beyer, we began to explore interactive distance collaboration that included simultaneous performance and improvisation between different locations. We used the internet to recruit dancers to take part in this collaborative improvisation. Megan responded and also recruited dancers to participate. Right from the first, these interactive collaborations were successful, and I was struck by Megan's openness and ability to creatively adjust within whatever parameters emerged to structure the moment. Everything was done within the span of a day from rehearsing to create materials in interacting with music, visual imagery, and movement to the moment of connecting to and responding to performers, technicians, and artists at other sites. Eventually, production planning to develop a theme and scenes was done through Internet over a few weeks with exchanges and connections to explore distance improvisation, collaboration, and coordination.

In my final years at NYU, we revived a course created for me in 1969 to introduce new technologies to Music Education which was called EXPANDED MUSIC: Its Impact on Music Education. We explored the works of artists that were performing at The Electric Circus. The course ran for about five years until I became so involved in creating new programs for the department. Then around 2010, we revived the course simply as EXPANDED MUSIC. Music became an entree to all the arts and technology---starting with music and expanding to include all the arts and technology. Because I noticed that musicians often did not seem comfortable in their bodies as they performed, I thought we should begin with movement and movement improvisation... (Expanded Movement as it were). I thought of Megan and asked if she would be willing to collaborate with me in the course, and the outcome was the creation of many memorable moments in the Provincetown Playhouse that were then applied in interactive productions with different locations, including Norway, Argentina, Ireland and others in NYU BlackBox Theatre and NYU LoeweTheatre.

Scenes from Minturn's Monopoly: The Landlord's Game (photo by Jeff Schultz Photography)

As Megan's career has unfolded, she has developed a process of collaborating with her dancers in creating new works that address cultural issues, such as Monopoly: The Landlord's Game, inspired by Lizzie Magie, who was the original creator of the game and obtained a patent in 1903 as The Landlord's Game that was intended to teach Henry George's of political economy applied to everyday economics. However, the game was circulated informally to many people, who kept changing and adding rules. Elizabeth's creation was co-opted by Charles Darrow in 1935, who with Parker Brothers also secured a patent for Monopoly. Parker Brothers purchased Elizabeth's patent for $500. She insisted that her game be published as she created it with no changes, so Parker Brothers continued to publish The Landlord's Game and Monopoly, but Elizabeth received no royalties or credit for Monopoly. Megan's use of this material uses the game pieces of Monopoly and an imagined space of the game board, and with creative and imaginative twists, explores the injustices of our current "game board rules"---as well as celebrating the creative brilliance of the game's originator, Elizabeth Magie.

As New York entered Lockdown for the COVID-19, I started checking with creative artists as to how the lockdown has affected their process and creative work. In Megan's words, here is how she is pursuing new collaborative work with her colleagues:

A recent NYTimes cover page commemorated the almost 100,000 lives lost in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  It listed the names and short phrases from the obituaries of 1,000 people, or 1% of the people who have passed away from the virus. With so much communal grief and loss, mourning is not only appropriate, but I believe it is needed.  Much has been written about the stages of grief, including that they do not occur in linear steps.  The pandemic has impacted us in different manners and to different extremes, on different days.  I attended a memorial on zoom for someone lost to the virus; a performance I had been preparing for over the course of two years was cancelled; I am attempting to teach dance virtually and miss the community of my students.  These types of loss are of different magnitudes; the loss of life is paramount.  The feeling of artistic loss, nevertheless, leaves an impact.  Fortunately, a community with whom I have collaborated continues to redefine and explore the possibilities of our work.

Tagged is a project that brings together artists from multiple disciplines to create an experience in totality.  Music, dance, and the visual arts converge in a shared conversation. The formal process began in 2019, though some of the conversations, choreographic phrases, and imaginings began much earlier. Our two performances in 2019 were at the Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn.  We used both outdoor and indoor space, a formal gallery room, a hallway, and a nook.  The importance of these physical areas appears all the more pertinent during a pandemic in which space has been restricted, shifted, and due to being confined in it, stretched.  The dance and music during the actual performances were largely improvisational, yet the structure created through our shared, in-person dialogue allowed for this creative space.  It also created an organic path for us to follow as a collective. 

Much of this process was predicated upon our physical presence and connection with one another. 

 What felt previously like a singular process has now turned to processes.  We meet on Zoom calls, send one another choreographed moments via video, and work to build together. Yet I, personally, have struggled in my process without the synergy of our in-person dialogue, movement, and the co-creation of a vision. To get a pulse on this impression that the pandemic is affecting us differently, I asked my collaborators about how their work has been affected.  

Evan Joseph, the composer, has continued his work at home.  Due to the nature of his work, he is able to create and compose from home.  His collaborations with this project and those with filmmakers have continued.  He discussed how his work has largely remained consistent with that prior to the pandemic, though he has stints where he is more creative than others. Similarly, David Gitt found that his practice has kept him productive during this environment, partly as a means of staying sane.  Most of his works are not shared in inside spaces.  He hopes more visual artists willrespond to the pandemic by being more open to reclaiming spaces other than gallery and museum spaces.  Kelli Chapman, a dancer, discussed the difficulty of moving and creating at home.  She described how she associates the space of “home” with relaxation, cooking, and rest. Michelle Applebaum correspondingly described how she continues her exercise and yoga practices, but her dance practice was difficult to maintain during the first month of quarantine.  After this first month, though, she entered more into her creative brain and found ways to dance throughout the pandemic.  Personally, I struggle with dancing in my apartment.  While I am fortunate to have space to move, my floors are old and creaky.  My neighbors living on the floor below me complain about my walking, much less my dancing. 

While our processes have been affected differently, we are exploring possibilities for further collaboration and construction.  We continue to build through sharing materials online.  Dance phrases are being added upon by sending video sections of our work and creating based on what is shared.  We are also exploring the creation of a film with visual art being activated by musicians and dancers in the setting of Gowanus, Brooklyn.  We will create this following social distancing guidelines.  Without question, one of the most satisfying aspects of this project is the community of artists that is formed.  Together we share a process, but also our lives in the arts, with its difficulties and beauty.