Let the music play: the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS creates a lasting legacy for composers struck down in the pandemic. (Health Update).

"For every Liberace or Nureyev or Michael Bennett," says Joseph Dalton, "there are dozens more artists who did not reach that level of fame but may have been just as accomplished and eloquent"--but whose voices have been silenced by AIDS. Dalton, 39, directs the music archive of the Estate Project for Artists With AIDS, charged with creating a 500-page online catalog to document the work of composers who have died of complications from AIDS. The goal, he says, is "that the personality and artistic vision of these men may be brought to life again."

Oscar-winning composer John Corigliano adds, "Many of the composers memorialized in the archive were former students of mine. I feel like a parent; the kids whom I taught are gone." In early May, Corigliano hosted an Estate Project concert at New York's Guggenheim Museum featuring the works of the late composers Yvar Mikhashoff and Robert Chesley as well as several living HIV-positive composers.

Founded in 1991, the Estate Project researches, catalogs, and preserves the legacies of artists with AIDS both in music and in the visual arts, film, video, dance, theater, and literature. Dalton's focus is on musical artists, such as the late Tom Brown; Dalton convinced Brown's mother to send her son's music.

"It came in one box," he recalls. "There were about 40 songs, a few scripts, and a self-produced CD. After I listed everything, I listened to the songs Tom wrote after he was diagnosed. The sincerity and emotional presence that came through in his singing and song-writing spoke of a great talent and a great spirit. It was the first time doing this work that I literally cried. How lucky we are to still have that one box that arrived today."