Legendary singer, composer and transgender activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland today announces his new studio album, Laughter In Summer. A collaborative effort born from the love story between himself and eco-poet, theatre actor and producer Elizabeth Copeland, 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”.

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.

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.