Legendary singer, composer and transgender activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland today announces his new studio album, Laughter In Summer. A collaborative effort born from the love story between himself and eco-poet, theatre actor and producer Elizabeth Copeland, the record is due out 6th February 2026 via Transgressive Records and available to preorder here. Alongside the announcement, the Copelands share the moving double single “Children’s Anthem” / “Let Us Dance (Movement One)”. “Let Us Dance (Movement One)” opens the record’s nine tracks, all captured in a single take, while “Children’s Anthem” dates from the couple’s early years together, originally penned for a teachers’ workshop on bullying.
Commenting on the two tracks Glenn and Elizabeth say: “Let Us Dance holds deep personal meaning for us as a couple, and it’s one of our most favourite songs to perform together. It’s a gentle reminder that life invites us to embody joy through movement, no matter the circumstances, no matter how difficult the path. Originally published on Keyboard Fantasies, this choral rework features a newly minted Montreal choir that we met mere moments before recording Movement One. It’s raw and honest – much the way we live our lives now.”
“Children’s Anthem was one of our very first creative collaborations as a couple, originally written in 2007 for an anti-bullying conference. We’re bringing it back on this new album with a fresh arrangement dedicated to our precious granddaughter Freya. We hope it will serve as a rally cry to support and protect all the children of the world. At a time when violence has become endemic, this song and its message is more critical than ever.”
From the moment we are born, we begin the long walk home. Elizabeth and Beverly Glenn-Copeland started down the path together nearly half a century ago, and have been trailing it since, hand in hand and song by song. Together, they’ve made a life sharing their unselfish hearts—ones too large for earthly configuration—through art and community, encouraging us all to take our own dance down the road with elemental love and grace.
Now, as Glenn lives with a version of Dementia known as LATE, their walk has taken on a different weight. Out of this season comes Laughter In Summer, an album the couple made together—realizing, before long, that it was a love letter to one another: a tender ledger of memories, shared devotion, grief and joy.
Elizabeth has now rightly taken her place as producer of Glenn’s work, shaping Laughter In Summer alongside their music director, Alex Samaras. The album’s title comes from a song born almost accidentally. Glenn, as his cognitive impairment advanced, began composing a series of instrumentals he called Songs With No Words, meant for listeners to write their own lyrics. One day he played one such piece for Elizabeth. Sitting by a lake, listening to loons and gazing at the sky, words rose up in her: laughter in summer, how I remember. “It was a very painful time,” she recalls, “because I was so aware of just how much of my sweetheart I was losing.” My life, my joy, on Earth, here, with you, she sang. The words came as a gift, as if from the loons themselves.
In 2024, before a Montreal performance, they were invited to spend a few days recording alongside producer and engineer Howard Bilerman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Vic Chesnutt, and Wolf Parade) at the iconic Hotel2Tango. There was no plan to make a record. They simply wanted to capture the songs they had been singing on tour, joined by a choir of Montreal voices gathered by Alex. None of the singers had rehearsed with Glenn and Elizabeth. As the engineers were getting the mic levels set, Glenn, Elizabeth and the choir loosely rehearsed their first song. This rehearsal is what you hear on Let Us Dance, Movement 2. Every other song on the record was done in Glenn’s preferred style–one take only.
As Glenn’s executive functioning diminishes, his musical being—“and I would say his heart self,” Elizabeth adds—only grows stronger. At least once a week, they sit together and name what is being lost. “Because when you deny an emotion,” Elizabeth says, “it becomes frozen within you.” The making of Laughter In Summer became another way of being present with each other—songs not just as compositions but as testaments.
“From the moment we are born, we are walking towards our deaths,” Elizabeth says. “And that’s okay. In order for there to be birth, there must be death.” Glenn tells her that when he goes, he will be able to be with her even more than now. For Elizabeth, the thought is both comfort and pain. But what sustains them both is Glenn’s refusal to stop giving. “Sometimes he’ll hold my hands and say, ‘I have so much more to give. I’ve got so much to give these young people.’”
