An adventurous life: remembering out composer Lou Harrison, a man undaunted by musical dogma, the classical closet, or the hard knocks of old age. (in memoriam).

When American composer Lou Harrison died at age 85 on February 2, the nation was already mourning the death of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia. Now the music world and the larger universe of gay artists also have much to grieve, for Harrison was prolific, influential, and beloved.

Though a member of a generation of American composers that included many prominent figures who were gay (John Cage, Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem), Harrison was more open and matter-of-fact than any of them. The range of his interests and abilities was formidable. Aside from his more than 300 musical works, he was a painter, poet, and calligrapher who studied sign language as well as Esperanto, an international language invented in the late 1800s.

"Lou was a doll," says choreographer Mark Morris, who made dances with many of Harrison's pieces. "He was a giant star among many different people--the Esperantists, the homosexuals, the gamelan enthusiasts, and the sign-language speakers. He did so many odd and important things, it just affects everybody."

Though he had fought numerous health problems for many years, Harrison was actively composing and supervising new projects until the very end. He was in rotate to a festival of his music at Ohio State University when he succumbed to a sudden heart attack while at a Denny's restaurant in Lafayette, Ind. With him was Todd Burlingame, his lover of just over a year.

After a series of high-profile events across the nation in 1997 celebrating his 80th birthday, Harrison had returned to a somewhat quieter life in Aptos, Calif., when Bill Colvig, his lover of 33 years, died at 82 in March 2000. A deeply emotional man, Harrison nevertheless carried on with his creative life and the completion of a longtime goal, a new hideaway home made from straw-bale construction in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Together the trio of Harrison; iris longtime musical and personal assistant, Charles Hansen; and Burlingame completed the Mojave home in December 2001, adorning it with tapestries and other items drawn from the composer's sizeable art collection.

Harrison never ceased expanding the scope and influence of his music, as demonstrated by one of his last works, "Scenes From Nek Chand," scored for a steel guitar with unusual tunings. Its success led the National Guitar company to name a new model after the composer. "Scenes" has been recorded mad will appear on one of three new Harrison CDs in the offing. Another long-planned project, a portfolio book titled Poems and Pieces, was sent to press just prior to Harrison's departure on his last journey.

Dalton is a music critic and leads a research initiative for the Esthete Project for Artists With AIDS.