“There’s a sense of rightness about it,” says Glenn Copeland as he croons with his band in this exclusive clip from Keyboard Fantasies. “I love being around them.”
The groundbreaking transgender artist takes the stage in Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story and shares his wisdom gained after over three decades of moving audiences through music. Directed by Posy Dixon, Keyboard Fantasies takes its name from the album that Copeland recorded in Huntsville, Ontario in 1986. Observing the intersections of race, gender identity, and queerness, the film is a stirring tribute to music’s ability to connect audiences through shared experiences.
“Copeland not only embraced his identity, he emerged into the spotlight and bloomed again as performer,” wrote Susan G. Cole while reviewing Keyboard Fantasies during Hot Docs. “That blossoming is a beautiful thing to behold. Copeland’s baritone voice is haunting, and at age 73, stronger than ever, and so is his charismatic stage presence.”
Get a taste of Copeland’s haunting voice in this exclusive clip featuring his performance of “Color of Anyhow.” Keyboard Fantasies will be in select theatres and on VOD October 29.
Synopsis
As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realised far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies and subsequent plays by Four Tet, Caribou and more, the music had finally found its audience two generations down the line.
Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story sees the protagonist commit his life and music to screen for the first time – an intimate coming of age story spinning pain and the suffering of prejudice into rhythm, hope and joy. Half aural-visual history, half DIY tour-video, the film provides a vehicle for our newly appointed queer elder to connect with youth across the globe. A timely lullaby to soothe those souls struggling to make sense of the world.
