Trans Legend Beverly Glenn-Copeland Launches New Album, “Laughter In Summer”
A diagnosis of dementia adds a layer of poignancy to tracks that serve as “a tender ledger of cherished memories, unending devotion, and shared grief.”
Featured Images: courtesy of Beverly and Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland
Created as a celebration of companionship, love and loss, trans music pioneer Beverly Glenn-Copeland released his new album on February 6th. Laughter in Summer is a love letter in the form of music, between Glenn-Copeland and his wife, Elizabeth, who lends her voice to the offerings. Produced amidst the challenges of a late dementia diagnosis, the artist’s capture of moments through song lends an air of poignancy to the work, which also features a Montreal choir and team of talented musicians who paint the tracks with gentle strokes of piano, clarinet, and flute.
“This deeply personal album is a collaborative effort born from the love story my sweetheart Elizabeth and I have been writing together for a lifetime,” Glenn-Copeland announced on IG last October.
“We started down this path nearly a half century ago and have been trailing it ever since, hand in hand and song by song, culminating in this ultimate musical love letter,” he wrote. “It’s a tender ledger of cherished memories, unending devotion, and shared grief. It’s raw, honest and unfiltered; much the way we live these days.”
The Canadian musician’s journey over the decades is extraordinary and his catapult to recognition, both unlikely and blessed. He is known for his 1986 nature-inspired album Keyboard Fantasies, which The Guardian has described as a “trippy mix of electronica, folk and new age, overlaid with Glenn-Copeland’s sumptuous contralto tenor.” Originally released on cassette tape, and recorded on a Yamaha DX7 and Roland TR-707 drum machine, the album did not garner immediate attention, and only sold a few copies at first. But it emerged from a position of being ‘overlooked’ to one of ‘rediscovery’ when a Japanese collector unearthed it in 2015. Keyboard Fantasies was reissued two years later to a new generation of listeners who took to the ambient new age vibe.
Glenn-Copeland shot to cult icon status, and went on to earn accolades that included the 2020 Polaris Music Heritage Prize, an honorary doctorate from University of Toronto, and the Joyce Warshow Lifetime Achievement Award from SAGE. He was honored by Sam Smith (with whom he’s also collaborated) for his 50-year career and 2SLGBTQIA+ activism, receiving the 2025 PTP Pink Awards Legacy Award.
Glenn-Copeland, now 82, has been recording music since 1970. In earlier years, he wrote for Sesame Street and had a regular role on the Canadian children’s television show Mr Dressup (which also reached the TV antennas of kids, like myself, in Detroit back in the day). He came out as trans in the 1990s when he was in his mid-50s, and began publicly identifying as a transgender man in 2002-2003. According to a University of Toronto interview, he told his mother at the age of three that he knew he was a boy. After embarking on singing lessons at age 17, he studied classical music at McGill University, where he was one of the first Black students. His path and perspective, by his own accounts, have been informed by the philosophies of Buddhism.
While the occasion of the new release is celebrated as a stand-out moment, it also serves as an invitation to explore the trove of previous offerings. It would be hard to describe Love Takes All, from the 2023 album, The Ones Ahead, as anything less than ethereal and painfully beautiful.
Let the starlight shine
Let the winds blow
Fill this heart of mine with your evening glow
These are bones, they know
Soon with death must go
Let the rivers run to your once eve
All will be undone
So it is with me
Now I know, I see
What must be will be
Let the treetops dance
Let the rain fall
Though I’ve made my stance
I will not recall
What was grand is small
Love just takes it all
