BEVERLY GLENN COPELAND レコード& CD

Review: Rather confusingly, Beverly Glenn Copeland released a self titled album called Beverly Glenn Copeland in the 1970s, which is not the same album as this one, called simply Beverly Copeland. Both, along with several other of their works, are being reissued at the moment on vinyl and CD as a result of a great reappraisal of their work during the pandemic. The experimental musician identifies as a transgender man and is known for having written soundtracks for Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station next to her jazz, ambient, exotic and electronic fusion records.

Review: Beverly Glenn Copeland's work has been getting revisited, reappraised and reissued plenty in the last couple of years and several of her seminal albums are all arriving in July across various different formats. Copeland was always ahead of their time with her mix of experimental, ambient, exotic electronic sounds and poetry and famously scored kids' TV shows cut as including Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station. Now 78 and identifying as a transgender man after a time identifying as a lesbian, their second 70's recording - this self-titled album - is a real jazz classic widely admired amongst fans.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The re-discovery and re-appraisal of Beverly Glenn-Copeland's work is one of the more surprising outcomes of the pandemic's great pause, which for some people at least meant having more time to dive into the archives of cultural history, from music to literature to movies. Not that the spotlight isn't wholly deserving. As this 1986 album shows, the artist was well ahead of their time, with this strange, heady brew of electronic exoticism, experimental ambient and percussive poetry easy to mistake for a contemporary record.

Glenn-Copeland's own story is also a pretty interesting one. Now 76 years old, the maestro spent years identifying as a lesbian woman, before investigations in gender discourse led to the revelation that a transgender man was a more comfortable identity for the music maker, who also lays claim to a catalogue of kids' TV scores, including Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station.