Beverly Glenn-Copeland – Light Of The Heavens
“Light Of The Heavens” is a nearly lost song recorded around the time of Keyboard Fantasies, Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s pivotal 1986 album, found recently on archive tapes by publisher Jeff Waye and released today on Transgressive. The song comes with a performance video from the same era, featuring choreography by Susan McNaughton. It was recorded on the Canadian Shield, where Glenn-Copeland lived for many years in what the artist describes as “hermit-like splendour.”
The lyric moves between arrival and seeking, and the tension between those two states is where the song earns its weight. The opening verse positions the singer coming to greet the light, a confident arrival into something beautiful. The chorus immediately introduces a different posture: “I too seek the light of the heavenly view.” Coming toward something and seeking it are not the same gesture, and Glenn-Copeland holds both simultaneously across the whole track. The final verse reaches for the image of navigating home by guiding stars through a cosmic veil, which is undoubtedly the register Keyboard Fantasies occupied, this sense of being oriented by forces larger and quieter than ordinary life. That the song sat in a box for forty years and resurfaces in the same year the album turns forty feels less like coincidence than like the archive giving something back.
The release follows Laughter In Summer, the album Glenn-Copeland made with wife and producer Elizabeth Copeland earlier this year. Glenn-Copeland performs at the Royal Festival Hall on June 18th as part of Harry Styles’ Meltdown Festival, and has announced 2027 Canadian dates with Owen Pallett opening.
Europe & UK:
- Jun. 18 / London, UK / Harry Styles’ Meltdown Festival (Royal Festival Hall)
- Jun. 27 / Paris, France / La Bourse De Commerce
- Jul. 1 / Sète, France / Worldwide Festival
- Sep. 3 / Bristol, UK / St George’s
- Sep. 5 / Larmer Tree, UK / End of the Road Festival
- Sep. 7 / Copenhagen, Denmark / Bellevue Theatre
- Sep. 11 / Aarhus, Denmark / Alter Festival
Canada (w/ Owen Pallett):
- Jan. 30 / Ottawa, ON / National Arts Centre
- Feb. 5 / Toronto, ON / Danforth Music Hall
- Feb. 28 / Vancouver, BC / Vogue Theatre
