Following universal acclaim for his new album Laughter In Summer, released in February via Transgressive Records, today Beverly Glenn-Copeland announces his biggest London headline show to date, performing at the Royal Festival Hall as part of Harry Styles’ Meltdown on Thursday 18th June.
All upcoming UK & EU live dates are listed below:
- April 11 - The Hague, NL - Rewire Festival
- April 13 - Berlin, DE - Volksbühne Berlin
- May 1 - Brighton, UK – Dome Concert Hall / Brighton Festival
- June 6 - Barcelona, ES - Primavera Sound
- June 9 - Lisbon, PT - Nova
- June 12 - London, UK - LIDO Festival
- June 18 - London, UK – Royal Festival Hall / Harry Styles' Meltdown Festival
- July 1 - Sète, FR - Worldwide Festival
- September 5 - Larmer Tree, UK - End of the Road Festival
- September 7 - Copenhagen, DK - Bellevue Theatre
- September 11 - Aarhus, DK - Alter Festival
Acclaim for Laughter In Summer:
“This collection of new and reinterpreted songs is a powerful and uplifting experience... ‘Harbour’ is sung here as a duet between husband and wife, an expression of devotion that is intimate, humbling and sublime.” MOJO – 4 stars ****
“Glenn-Copeland’s voice exudes grace... a unique creative force... music that’s imaginative, poignant and achingly human.” Uncut – 8/10
“If this album, about love, companionship, loss and decay, is his last work, it will be a poignant finale.” Sunday Times – 4 stars **** Album Of The Week
“Much like Joni Mitchell’s rearrangements of her earlier work, this revisited music takes on a newfound poignancy and cements Glenn-Copeland’s legacy.” The Observer
“Sublime... A haunting, beautiful album from the enduring Canadian artist.” The Sun – 9/10
“A beautifully emotive nine track ode to being in the autumn of one’s life... Gorgeous hymnal reveries to joy and togetherness.” Record Collector – 4 stars ****
“An album full of soul and devotion.” The Guardian
“Songs like ‘Harbour’ and the title track are imbued with both childlike wonder and serene wisdom... Deeply poignant and moving.” Electronic Sound
“Stunning... the choir – soaring around Glenn-Copeland’s expressively tender voice - injects the songs with a majestic, profoundly moving pull.” The Line Of Best Fit – 8/10
“Beautifully tender, life-affirming songs... Glenn’s voice is impossibly rich and evocative.” MusicOMH – 9/10
“Astonishingly beautiful... The mood is joyfully bittersweet, basking in the glow of a shared life.” The WIRE
“Backed by a solitary piano, the four duets with his wife Elizabth glow with an enduring love.” Mail On Sunday – 4 stars ****
“Laughter In Summer radiates warmth... Across nine enveloping pieces, Glenn and Elizabeth reckon with grief through the lens of romance and memory... Laughter In Summer is a delicate love letter committed to tape.” Bandcamp
“This collection of new and reinterpreted songs is hugely uplifting and deeply moving.” Daily Express – 4 stars ****
“Laughter in Summer is a tribute to Glenn and Elizabeth’s 20-year partnership, a nostalgic and often achingly sad statement on joy, loss, devotion and memory rooted in wistful piano compositions.The record is grief-touched but hope-lit, bookended by the refrain: ‘let us dance down the road’.” DJ mag
“Many of the songs have a hymn-like quality and the voices are uniformly excellent... This album is a fitting addition to his unique legacy.” Silent Radio
“Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s latest album is born of pain but makes for truly life-affirming listening.” The Skinny – 4 stars ****
“Delightful, charming, tender and timeless, this late-career LP from the 82-year-old Canadian singer alongside partner Elizabeth is a love letter to their companionship.” Song Bar
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.’”
Laughter In Summer follows Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s highly acclaimed 2023 record The Ones Ahead, as well as the 2024 collaboration with Sam Smith on a new recording of his classic song “Ever New” for the Red Hot Org Transa compilation record.
Laughter In Summer artwork and tracklist:
1. Let Us Dance (Movement One)
2. Ever New
3. Laughter In Summer feat. Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland
4. Children’s Anthem feat. Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland
5. Harbour feat. Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland
6. Middle Island Lament feat. Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland
7. Shenandoah
8. Prince Caspian’s Dream
9. Let Us Dance (Movement Two)