To mark his retirement from The Cooper Union, Professor George Sidebotham is giving a series of concerts, performing just a few of the many songs that he’s written over the years, including several inspired by his 36 years teaching at Cooper. Billed as “Sidebo’s First Last Time Concert Series,” the trio of shows started on May 7 and will continue this week in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium.

Accompanied by Jonas Margono ME’26 on keyboard and Logan Po EE’25 on electric bass, Sidebotham sang and played guitar and saxophone. Andrew Lunyk ME’26 ran a slideshow of Sidebotham’s drawings and favorite quotations from Peter Cooper, Carl Jung, and Sunyru Suzuki, among others.

Sidebotham, who grew up in Westchester, New York, considered a career in music, but after his first year at Trinity College, he settled on mechanical and aerospace engineering, earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. All along, though, he’s continued to make music, playing jazz standards as well as his own compositions. After retiring, he’ll continue to make music, take voice lessons, and possibly record some of his songs, which wrestle with mysteries both common (“I Want to Understand Youth”) and esoteric (“Varignon’s Theorem,” a song about parsing the complex theories of an 18th century mathematician). 

Other songs elucidate scientific concepts for students. Aymane Saissi, a senior mechanical engineering student who has conducted research with Professor Sidebotham for three years, recalls taking a thermodynamics class with his mentor. Near the end of the semester, the class covered the fundamentals of rocket science. Sidebotham composed songs to clarify relevant theories.

He’s written a paean to Peter Cooper titled “Citizen of New York” as well as “We Are Cooper Union,” which he hopes will one day be adopted as the school song. His song “My Conduit” pays tribute to Olivia Park, his student assistant during the COVID-19 pandemic when classes were virtual. Sidebotham’s lyrics recall his anxiety about those first online classes and Park’s invaluable assistance as “translator” between professor and students. “So who can I turn to, who can I trust? / She’s my conduit, my channel through the mystery of youth.”

In between songs at last Wednesday’s concert, he reminisced about Cooper, as well as his early training as a musician. He recalled that his high school music teacher had claimed playing ballads tested a musician’s chops, and so he would try to play “Misty” on his tenor saxophone.

A student called out: “Who’s Misty?”

Sadly, Olivia Park was not on hand to translate.

Sidebo’s remaining “First Last Time” gigs are on Wednesday, May 14, from 4 to 6 pm and Thursday, May 15, from 1 to 3 pm.