Throughout a fifty year recording career, Beverly Glenn-Copeland's music has defied categorisation and genre, its only consistency being the fusion of vision, technology, spirituality and place. A Black, trans artist, he is a strong advocate on behalf of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ2S+ communities in Canada and abroad, and has influenced new generations of artists.

You are invited to a celebration of the extraordinary work of this visionary artist and University of Toronto Honorary Degree Recipient with a screening of Keyboard Fantasies, followed by a panel discussion (details below).

Event Information & Registration

Tuesday, June 13^th from 3pm to 5pm

Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5).

Doors open at 2:30pm; light refreshments will be served

Registration required: https://uoft.me/keyboardfantasies

Participants/audience members are requested to wear masks for the indoor portion of the event.

About the panel:

Moderator:

Dr. Ellie M. Hisama is Dean of the Faculty of Music and Professor of Music at the University of Toronto and is Professor Emerita of Music at Columbia University. Her research and teaching have addressed issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, the social and political dimensions of music, and public engagement. She is the author of Gendering Musical Modernism and editor of the volumes Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Worlds and Critical Minded: New Approaches to Hip Hop Studies. In 2022, she founded Future Sound 6ix, a program in partnership with the YWCA with funding from the Nick Nurse Foundation, for female-identifying and gender-nonconforming youth to engage with sound at the U of T’s Electronic Music Studio.

Panelists:

Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland is an author and theatre artist whose career has evolved at the intersection of arts and activism. Her novella, JAZZ: Nature’s Improvisation, a coming-of-age story of a young trans male, won the 2014 Ken Klonsky Novella Prize, later shortlisted for the 2015 ReLit Award. As 2018 Writer-in-Residence at the Joggins Fossil Institute, she wrote the narrative eco-poem, “Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge: Pangea’s Dream Remembered” (Chapel Street Editions), later taking this work on the road to the Dawson City Music Festival, Folk on the Rocks, and MoMA PS1 in NYC. As part of their deep commitment to working with children and youth, Elizabeth and Glenn founded and ran a theater school devoted to community building. Through a series of artist residencies, they collaborated on the creation of five musical plays which speak to the times in which we live. Elizabeth believes in the power of art to change lives. Her work speaks of that belief.

Throughout a fifty year recording career, Beverly Glenn-Copeland's music has defied categorisation and genre, its only consistency being the fusion of vision, technology, spirituality and place. A Black, trans artist, he is a strong advocate on behalf of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ2S+ communities in Canada and abroad, and has influenced new generations of artists. Beverly Glenn-Copeland is releasing an album of ground-breaking new music, The One's Ahead, scheduled for launch on July 28.

Dr. Eliot Britton, a proud member of the Manitoba Metis Federation, integrates electronic and instrumental music though an energetic and colourful personal language. His creative output expresses an eclectic musical experience from gramophones to videogames, drum machines, orchestras and electronic chamber music. Rhythmic gadgetry, artistry, personal history and the colours of technology permeate his works. By drawing on these sound worlds and others, Dr. Britton's compositions tap the newly available resources of the twenty-first century. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the SSHRC Bombardier Graduate Scholarship, Louis Riel Scholarship, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet Aspirant Program’s Emerging Composer Collaboration and, more recently, the Hugh Le Caine and Serge Garant SOCAN awards. Dr. Britton is co-director of Manitoba’s Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival. His projects include a commission from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra titled “Heirloom Bison Culture” as well as a collaboration with Red Sky Dance Company and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Nikkei Canadian settler Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them) is a queer, trans non-binary, opera singer and theatre maker based in Tkarón:to/Treaty 13, and was recently featured in a CBC short-doc OPERA TRANS*FORMED. Heralded as “an artist with extraordinary things to say” (The Globe and Mail), Teiya comes from a background of over a decade and a half of singing both traditional and contemporary operatic roles across North America and Europe. They explore the intersections of identity through their original works such as the 5-time Dora nominated THE QUEEN IN ME (heading to the NAC in September 2023), and THE BUTTERFLY PROJECT (Toronto Summer Music July 2023), among others. Teiya is a co-founder of Amplified Opera, and is the 2022 recipient of the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize in Music from the Canada Council for the Arts. For more information, visit www.teiyakasahara.com.

Isaac Jean-François is a doctoral candidate in the joint degree program with African-American Studies and American Studies. Jean-François’s research interests include black studies, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and sound studies. His research on composer and performer Julius Eastman is featured in an issue of Current Musicology in an essay titled, “Julius Eastman: The Sonority of Blackness Otherwise” (July 2020). Jean-François is committed to the intersection between academia and advocacy work and serves as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Stonewall Community Foundation based in New York City. Jean-François earned his B.A. from Columbia University in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cum Laude. He holds a Certificate of Study from the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

This event is presented by the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, Sexual & Gender Diversity Office, Anti-Racism & Cultural Diversity Office, Women & Gender Studies Institute, and Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland is releasing an album of groundbreaking new music called, 'The One's Ahead', scheduled for launch on July 28.

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