Chan’s musical Memoir is as powerful as anything he did 20 years ago.

Goossens Hall, ABC Ultimo Sydney
July 18, 2014

It’s fair to say that emotions were running high in the ABC’s Goossens Hall on Friday night. The shooting down of flight MH17 over the Ukraine was still fresh in the minds of the audience as details had emerged over the course of the day. The concert was dedicated to the almost one hundred attendees of the International AIDS Conference that were killed on that flight. This tragic context also reminded everyone present that, while AIDS is no longer the death sentence it was during Lyle Chan’s time as an activist in the 90’s, the need for ongoing discussion and innovation has not lessened. This most recent loss is a huge blow to AIDS research, with some suggesting that the potential future cure to HIV/AIDS may have been lost on that plane. It is a loss every bit as tragic as the deaths caused by AIDS that Chan focuses his story upon.

Lyle Chan stopped composing at some point in the 90’s yet throughout the period he continued to sketch musical ideas as they came to him, inevitably shaped by...