Beverly Glenn-Copeland: Fastest Star feat. Julia Holter

By Kerry Doole

Beverly Glenn-Copeland - Fastest Star ft Julia Holter (Transgressive): On Friday, acclaimed East Coast-based composer/vocalist Beverly Glenn-Copeland released Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined, a multi-artist reinterpretation of his seminal 1986 work, Keyboard Fantasies, also released earlier this year, marking its 35th anniversary. In 2020, Keyboard Fantasies was awarded the prestigious Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize.

Reimagined is a collection of Glenn-Copeland songs re-worked and re-imagined by a group of creative kindred spirits. That impressive international list includes Bon Iver, Flock Of Dimes, Julia Holter, Arca, Kelsey Lu, Blood Orange, Joseph Shabason and Thom Gill, Jeremy Dutcher and Ana Roxanne.

Noted US singer/songwriter/composer Julia Holter has taken a piece entitled Winter Astral and transformed it into a new piece called Fastest Star. In a label press release, Holter recalls that "When I first heard Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s music, I remember a physical sensation of melting—melting into the swirling, kinetic, rich synth sound world he had made. I felt some kind of sense of relief and relax—catharsis?—not to be cheesy, but it was a physical reaction to the sounds. In this music, there’s a healing equilibrium— a buzzing warmth, something electrical that transfers out from the sounds into the body.  I have a physical response a lot with music, but here it felt distinct, there was a kind of balance and clarity to it."

Holter does justice to the power of Glenn-Copeland’s music in her piece, with washes of sound and ethereal vocals projecting a meditative sense of calm perfect for reflective listening over our holiday period.

The career of Glenn-Copeland is a fascinating one. In 1970, nine years after leaving the United States to study music in Canada, he released two self-titled albums in very limited editions. They became sought-after collector's items and a cult following developed for the artist. His work is only now getting the wide exposure it richly deserves.

 Glenn-Copeland returned to the US 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.

The LP version of Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined will be released on Feb. 25. 

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Publicity: Indoor Recess