The Brooklyn Rail

The crowd at Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s concert wasn’t, perhaps, what you’d expect for an eighty-year-old. Throngs of young queer people (masked, as was required) packed in like sardines. Glenn, as the Canada-based musician likes to be called, was helped onstage onto a cushioned lounge chair. A throne from which to sing, arms outstretched: “Welcome to you, both young and old.”

This song, “Ever New,” first released in 1986 on Keyboard Fantasies, is probably Glenn’s most loved. It has since been reworked by the likes of Bon Iver and now, most recently, Sam Smith, as part of Red Hot’s new album Transa. Though written long before Glenn was out, let alone self-actualized, as a transgender man, “Ever New” has become something of a trans anthem: “We are ever new, we are ever new.”

Someone unfamiliar with Glenn’s story might be puzzled by his fan base. Born to pianist parents in Philadelphia, Glenn was raised on a mixture of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Negro Spirituals. He studied German lieder at McGill but left to pursue songwriting.

A Quaker-turned-Buddhist, Glenn has been called an outsider, a naïve artist. But there’s nothing untrained about him. Maybe it’s the childlike wonder that his songs inspire. (Glenn did, after all, compose for Sesame Street during a slump.) Or maybe it’s an inability to categorize him that drives this non-designation. Though some songs have elements of Americana, New Age, and classical, Glenn transcends all of these.

Glenn discovered computers in the eighties. These tools, he realized, could make all sorts of “wild sounds” that pianos couldn’t. The outcome of Glenn’s electronic experiments, recorded in the woods of Ontario, was Keyboard Fantasies, first released on small-batch cassette. There were only a handful of sales. “I always thought,” said Glenn at Pioneer Works, “I’m gonna die and then they’re gonna discover my music.”

It wasn’t until 2015, when Fantasies was rediscovered by a Japanese record collector, that it garnered more popularity. A 2017 reissue prompted the then-septuagenarian’s first-ever tour, the subject of a 2019 documentary. It was during this tour that Glenn realized his new purpose in life: to uplift young people.

At first, I was skeptical of Glenn’s music. I didn’t get it. Many of his songs are exceedingly simple, just a straightforward melody above a synth track. Though some—like the operatic “La Vita” from his 2004 album Primal Prayer, first released under the pseudonym Phynix—are more ambitious, those are outliers. Perhaps I needed to hear him live to understand. Joined by a modest band—drums, keyboard, small chorus, and his wife, Elizabeth, providing additional vocals—Glenn sang “Let Us Dance.” He had an electrifying presence, jiving with Elizabeth from his seat.

Cane-assisted, Glenn went to stand at his djembe drums. “I went off to study classical music,” he joked, “and, at some point, my ancestors were like, ‘yeah, sure.’” His rendition of “Africa Calling,” from his most recent album The Ones Ahead, was full of fire.

Glenn’s secret, I think, lies somewhere in his voice. It has such warmth, low and quavering, especially soulful in “Deep River,” as well as “Shenandoah,” which he sang without accompaniment. Bristling with authenticity, Glenn’s songs feel nostalgic, wholesome. Some, like “Harbor,” written for his wife, are sappy. But in the sweetest sense. His voice, said Elizabeth, is “like nectar.” In short, he is lovely.

In September, Glenn shared that he was diagnosed with dementia, marking this as his last tour. The Pioneer Works concert was tinged with that sense of melancholy. It felt like I was witnessing a historical moment. Taja Cheek, of Performance Space New York, recited a poem in Glenn’s honor. “We don’t have very many trans elders, period,” she said. Let alone Black trans elders.

For a young nonbinary person, hearing Glenn sing is a bit like meeting a grandparent you didn’t know you had. His manner—his locutions, like “good grief”—reminds me so much of my late grandmother, gender-defiant in her own way, that my heart aches. Indeed, there’s a sense of catharsis, of “good grief,” to Glenn’s music that escaped me upon first listening. I normally hesitate to call any music “healing.” But, looking out into the wet-eyed crowd, I wondered if maybe that’s what this is.

Glenn ended his set with the feel-good “Onward and Upward,” which turned into something of a sing-along. As an encore, he performed “Prince Caspian’s Dream,” a song that took him several decades to “transcribe.” Glenn has said that he feels like a radio tuned to certain frequencies. “I don’t write my songs,” he said. “It’s coming from the universe through me.” I’m not sure if I believe in such muses. But if anyone were to change my mind, it would be Beverly Glenn-Copeland.