Beverly Glenn-Copeland reveals forthcoming album title track, "Laughter In Summer"

A song born almost accidentally, Glenn at first composed the music for a series of instrumentals meant for listeners to write their own lyrics. When he played the piece for Elizabeth, by a lake, listening to loons and gazing at the sky, words rose up in her: Laughter in summer, how I remember...

Diagnosed with dementia two years prior, Glenn and Elizabeth have discovered new ways to navigate the world together, and to create the art and music that so pulls them. On writing “Laughter in Summer” together, “It was a very painful time,” Elizabeth recalls, “because I was so aware of just how much of my sweetheart I was losing.”

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.

“From the moment we are born, we are walking towards our deaths,” Elizabeth says. “And that’s okay. In order for there to be birth, there must be death.” Glenn tells her that when he goes, he will be able to be with her even more than now. For Elizabeth, the thought is both comfort and pain. But what sustains them both is Glenn’s refusal to stop giving. “Sometimes he’ll hold my hands and say, ‘I have so much more to give. I’ve got so much to give these young people.’”