We have copied from Tim Page's posting about Kevin:

 When I look back upon the mid-1980s and my apprentice years as music critic for The New York Times, it sometimes seems that I did only two things: cover debut concerts and write AIDS obituaries - alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, over and over again. The debut shift was standard training for the junior critic; the AIDS beat was new and dolorous and nobody knew how to handle it. During the epidemic's first few years, the Times editors decreed that we should avoid any mention of the virus in our obituaries, out of a horribly misguided endeavor to spare families, friends (and, indeed, the deceased) any perceived "stigma." And so I spent my late 20s and early 30s writing about my gifted contemporaries. Some of them were starting careers, stepping out into whatever limelight they had generated for themselves. But an awful lot of them seemed to be dying from mysterious pneumonias, cancers, heart attacks, respiratory ailments and that all-purpose euphemism, a "lengthy illness," at an awfully early age.  

 Kevin Oldham was one of my debuts - a handsome, vibrant, self-assured and splendidly virtuosic young pianist who played his first New York recital at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1985. Eight years later, he too would die from AIDS, and I would write his obituary. But by then he had become a composer, one who had fought a desperate battle to leave the world some fresh and lovely music. Kevin faced his mortality with the stoic realism of a character out of Albert Camus, making the moment count, doing whatever he could with whatever time he had, knowing the situation was hopeless but not always bad, not every day.

 Kevin was diagnosed with H.I.V. in 1988, when he was 28 years old. He'd been doing the New York freelance musician thing, paying the rent by working for a veterinary center and later Jim Henson Productions, but living for those moments when he could take the stage. Now, knowing he would soon become unwell, he set out to leave a musical legacy, shifted his attention to composition, and wrote like mad. Most of the music on this disc was written in the face of death but there is nothing morbid about it; rather, for Kevin, impending death spurred on a renewed appreciation of life and determination to hang on to it as long as possible.

Kevin Oldham was born in Kansas City in 1960. He studied piano at Northwestern University and later at The Juilliard School, where he worked with Sascha Gorodnitzki and Herbert Stessin. In addition to the works recorded here, he completed Three Psalms, The Boulding Chorales, Op. 16, Three Carols for flute, voice and pedal harp, and his largest work, the rhapsodic, mercurial, deeply felt and ultimately enormously affirmative Concerto for Piano.  

Right up to the moment he walked onto the stage of the Lyric Theater in Kansas City, nobody knew whether he would be able to play. The first rehearsal had been a disaster; Kevin couldn't summon the strength to be heard over the orchestra. During the second rehearsal, his arms and hands were trembling uncontrollably. 

Still, that Sunday afternoon, through force of will, Kevin, looking gaunt and exhausted, but exhilarated, walked from the wings, bowed smartly, sat down at the keyboard and rolled his eyes nervously toward conductor William McGlaughlin, as if to say, "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

 The resultant performance was certainly not the fire-breathing, slam-bang reading Kevin could have given it a year before. But it was in every way respectable and it made a persuasive case for Concerto, pianist and a very gifted young composer. When it was over, the audience rose to its feet to give Kevin a stomping, roaring ovation. "It should have been Oldham's first triumph, it may well have been his last," I reported in Newsday at the time. "Under no illusions, he blinked out across the footlights and savored the standing ovation - laughing, crying, exhausted, grateful, overwhelmed."

 It would be nice to leave him there. In fact, Kevin went into St. Luke's Hospital the following day, where he spent most of his last two months. There were more invasive tests, more baffling symptoms, more obvious signs he was losing the battle. Yet he kept fighting, with grace and courage. And he was rewarded with a few moments that justified the struggle - a brief period when he felt strong enough to move home with his parents, a few happy, reasonably healthy days with his companion of three years, Stephen Rotondaro. But his condition continued to deteriorate and, on March 11, 1993, Kevin died.

 For every Rudolf Nureyev, Michael Bennett or Rock Hudson who has died from AIDS at or near the pinnacle of his profession, there are thousands of writers, dancers, actors, musicians and other artists who didn't have time to fulfill their potential. In the case of Kevin Oldham, AIDS ended the life of a gifted composer who was just getting started. We'll never know what he might have created. Operas? Symphonies? Further concertos? Probably all of these, and more; he was nothing if not ambitious. We regret the music that will never be, and we mourn for Kevin - a brave, funny, smart, articulate and compassionate man. But, through Kevin's own Herculean efforts, something has been saved. You hold the proof in your hands.

-Tim Page

 Tim Page is the chief classical music critic for The Washington Post and was the executive producer for BMG Catalyst, the label on which Kevin Oldham's Concerto for Piano was recorded.

 MUSIC NOTES 

-Karen Kushner