LEGENDARY CANADIAN/AMERICAN SINGER, COMPOSER AND TRANSGENDER ACTIVIST BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND REISSUES SEMINAL WORK

LEGENDARY CANADIAN/AMERICAN SINGER, COMPOSER AND TRANSGENDER ACTIVIST BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND REISSUES SEMINAL WORK KEYBOARD FANTASIES PHYSICAL RELEASE OUT TODAY VIA TRANSGRESSIVE, FEATURING ALTERNATIVE ARTWORK AND LINER NOTES BY ROBYN "There are three challenges in my life. The first is being black in a white culture. The second is being transgendered in a hetero-normative culture. The third is being an artist in a business culture”

"An outsider artist’s enchanted take on electronic music." - New Yorker   “His music continues to radiate.” -The Washington Post   “Like his contemporaries Leonard Cohen and Arthur Russell, with whom he shares a knack for writing melodies so satisfying they sound as if they’ve been unearthed from ancient memory, he sustains a singular voice no matter his setting.” -Art Forum   "The coalescence around his music is a welcome unifier in an ugly age. From his belated emergence on the world stage in the wake of Keyboard Fantasies, through feature-length films and right up until this compilation’s release, people have jostled non-stop to place their hand upon this beacon of light. Glenn-Copeland has obliged each one."- Pitchfork   “"He is ever new, ever urgent, ever necessary, because his music emerges from that which we all share: the land." - them.   Today marks the physical release of composer Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s 1986 masterpiece, Keyboard Fantasies re-issue. The LP/CD release will be out now Transgressive, marking the 35th anniversary of its original release and featuring updated artwork and liner notes by pop star, Robyn. This is the first time the album has ever been available on CD and both physical formats are available for purchase today here.    “Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s masterwork from 1986 is a hermetic and wondrous new age album that contains worlds beyond worlds,” Pitchfork said. To mark the occasion, the artist is sharing a new live performance video of “Let Us Dance” directed by Posy Dixon. "I am profoundly grateful to all who have supported the music of Keyboard Fantasies during these last years, with special appreciation to my wife Elizabeth,” says Glenn. “Though written over thirty years ago, I have listened to your recent musings about the hope the music inspires and the calm it brings, finally understanding that the transmissions sent through me from what I call the Universal Broadcasting System are helping to accomplish the UBS’s purpose, namely that of bringing us together as a single human family at last. For this I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Blessings.” Watch the video for “Let Us Dance” here.   The reissue follows the release of his album, Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Transmissions was a career-spanning album that includes compositions from his early works including selections from Keyboard Fantasies. It also included both new and archival unreleased tracks and live versions. This collection marked the first new release from Glenn-Copeland since 2004. The New York Times called it a “life-spanning mixtape that moves from the mournful torch songs of his youth to joyously soulful odes to survival. There are dances and dirges, reimagined gospel standards and radiant organ jams. But mostly, there are songs for pressing on, anthems for keeping the faith in yourself."   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. Read Pitchfork’s Sunday Review of Keyboard Fantasies here.    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 feature documentary Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story by Posy Dixon.   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.’

Keyboard Fantasies Tracklist A. Ever New Winter Astral Let Us Dance   B. Slow Dance Old Melody Sunset Village   Keyboard Fantasies Liner Notes: By Robyn Not all, but the best artists are like tourist guides waiting at the brink of an emotional landscape, waving their flag, greeting the arriving visitors to their new destination. “Welcome to Sadness, let me show you around!”   Not all artists are aware of the task, but some are nice enough to take this less glamorous part of the job seriously. Beverly Glenn-Copeland is one of the best at it. As an adventurer and a rebel he tread uncharted territory for years, getting to know the terrain so that others could follow and visit what he had already explored. I was one of those people who discovered Keyboard Fantasies many years after it was made, but it felt new and like it was made for this time. Glenn sang to me as I was lying down on the floor of a rehearsal studio: “Let it go, let it go down, it’s ok.” And I could hear that the voice knew what it was talking about, it pierced my heart and still gave me space to feel my own feelings. Glenn does this, he shows you the way with his voice, his polyrhythmic arrangements and the empty spaces in between, through his own experiences, but always with so much care for the one who listens. It’s even spelled out in the lyrics.    He seems even more focused on the healing and teacher aspects of his artistry now, but it is on Keyboard Fantasies that this purpose seems to crystallise.    Sometimes I think about Glenn and I imagine the moment after he finished the song, ‘Sunset Village’. I imagine him maybe listening back alone in his house in Ontario in the snow. I think about that this music existed such a long time before it became more widely known. That it was there in his mind and in his house long before I heard it and long before it was rediscovered by people all over the world. It does something strange, it makes me a discoverer together with Glenn every time I listen. And Glenn is like: “watch your head when you enter the cave; the ceiling is lower than one might think.” - Robyn

Photo Credit: Alex Sturrock