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With the release of his career retrospective album Transmissions just a month away, legendary Canadian/American singer, composer and transgender activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland has today announced the surprise release of a special live album for his ever-growing legions of fans. Live At Le Guess Who?, recorded in 2018 at the festival in Utrecht and released today, contains a multitude of extraordinary performances. After a decades-long hiatus from live performances, you can hear the joy of an artist realising how much his music has connected with a new generation. Listen here.
Additionally, Glenn-Copeland has shared a special live performance video of the track Sunset Village, filmed and recorded in Nova Scotia by Posy Dixon who created the acclaimed Keyboard Fantasies documentary.
Commenting on the Live At Le Guess Who? release Glenn-Copeland says:
"Thank you Bob van Heur, Johan Gijsen and Barry Spooren for your efforts to make this record possible. Performing at Le Guess Who? was a dream come true for my musical friends and for me. And a special thank you to my beloved wife, Elizabeth, without whose unflagging support my musical dreams would not have become a reality."
Transmissions, released 25th September, is a career-spanning album that includes compositions from his early works and his cult-status release, Keyboard Fantasies. It also includes both new and archival unreleased tracks and live versions. Fans can pre-order Transmissions here.
In 1970, nine years after leaving the United States to study music in Canada, Beverly Glenn-Copeland released two self-titled albums. Both were a stunning showcase of classical and jazz acumen, layered with poetry and accompanied by some of the best players of the time. Original pressings now fetch thousands of dollars. Glenn-Copeland then vanished as a recording artist until his re-emergence in 1986 with the release (just a few hundred copies on cassette) of what many now believe to be his masterpiece, Keyboard Fantasies. Thirty years later, revered Japanese record-collector Ryota Masuko came across one of those cassettes and went on a mission to turn other audiophiles onto Glenn-Copeland’s work and to find the artist himself.
Word spread and a cult following was quickly amassed. After repeated requests for live performances, Beverly Glenn-Copeland acquiesced, forming a band of young musicians he calls Indigo Rising and playing his first-ever shows in Canada and Europe. Nearly 60 years after he departed the United States, Beverly Glenn-Copeland returned in late 2019 with a performance at MOMA in New York City alongside a short documentary from the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s In the Making series and a screening of the documentary Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story by Posy Dixon.
Winner of the 2020 Audience Award at Hot Docs, the film - part biopic, part tour documentary - catches up with Glenn-Copeland as he embarks on his first international tour at the age of 74. The film is currently appearing on the international festival circuit and upcoming screenings can be found here.
Although the recorded output of his career has been sparse, he has been prolific in other ways. Canadian’s knew him best as regular guest Beverly on the beloved Canadian children’s TV show Mr. Dress-up for nearly 30 years. He wrote for Sesame Street. He wrote musicals, operas, children’s music and hundreds upon hundreds of other songs even though he only had the means to record those few aforementioned albums. "There is this incredible underlying thing," he says, "that joy and suffering is a part of life. Life is good and bad. There is something profound to being alive. The great joy is to be alive. That is wondrous. Being alive means you’re going to go through some hell, some wonderful stuff and a lot of stuff that is neither here nor there."
