Going through more photos…
Even though I'd been in San Francisco a couple years when the quilt was unveiled at Moscone Center in December of 1988, I was still semi-insulated from the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, having lost only two friends to the disease: Kent "Red" Kelly (who'd moved from Phoenix to San Francisco in 1979 and remarked shortly before his death in 1987 that, "Six years in San Francisco are better than sixty in Arizona," and Ben Walzer, a dear friend and "neighbor with benefits" from my time in Tucson who passed only a few days after Kent.
But like happened with so many others, the arrival of the horrible 90s changed all that.
This series of photos turns out to be very timely, in that I attended a performance of the Corigliano Symphony #1 performed by Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall yesterday afternoon.
Why you say? Well, it was written in 1989 as a remembrance of his experiences of the series of steps that all those involved in the HIV world at that time were going through on a nearly daily basis, from hospitalization to death to memorial services, etc.
Attention to all readers in SF, NY, Boston, Montreal, Toronto:
The Philharmonic takes this work on its tour which commences 3/11 in SF, then heads east thereafter. Catch it if you can – truly an amazing work.