Album Notes

If you had less than a year to live, what songs would YOU record?

That was the prospect facing singer, songwriter, author and AIDS activist Michael Callen, who, despite having achieved widespread notoriety as a co-inventor of safe(r) sex - a founder of the People With AIDS self-empowerment movement - a founder of community-based AIDS research - and a member of the world's most famous a cappella, gay male, politically aware group, THE FLIRTATIONS, wanted to be remembered as a singer.

LEGACY features such musical luminaries as Holly Near, Cris Williamson, Tom Robinson, Tret Fure, David Lasley, Arnold McCuller, Fred Hersch, John Bucchino and Steve Sandberg.

LEGACY was nominated for nine awards in six categories by the judges of the first annual Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards (the GLAMAS); it won four awards, including Album of the Year, Male Artist of the Year, Best Group Recording and Best Choral Recording.

Michael's unique political and activist voice is memorialized in New York City's Chelsea District, where the former Community Health Project has been re-christened the Michael Callen-Audre Lourde Community Health Center.

His equally strong, serious, funny, and sometimes just plain stunning musical voice, also deserves to be heard.