He spent the first five years of his life in Johnson City, after which he moved with his family to Knoxville and Chattanooga, where they lived from 1935-1945 while Coe’s father worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority and served in WWII.
Coe attended Sewanee Military Academy from 1946-1947 and then returned to Johnson City with his mother (his father died in 1945 while serving in WWII) where he graduated from Science Hill High School in 1948.
[1] He attended Hobart College in New York for two years before transferring to Yale University in 1950 to study composition with Paul Hindemith and Quincy Porter.
What was initially a six-week summer program evolved into three years of private composition study, sponsored by two scholarships through the French government for which Boulanger advocated.
[7] Many of Coe’s pieces were written in response to specific commissions, including “Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Percussion” commissioned by the Festival du Commings in 1980; “Scherzo for Clarinet, Brass, and Strings” by the Johnson City Symphony in 1986; “Ischiana” by the Baton Rouge Symphony in 1989; “Purcellular” by the City of London in 1995; and “Architects of Heaven” by the Carolina Concert Choir in Hendersonville, NC around 2008,[8] which Coe once described as “probably the best work I have ever written.”[3] Coe’s work was also supported by various grants, awards, and fellowships throughout the years.