‘This is from a recent album,” begins Beverly Glenn-Copeland, his hands in the air like a preacher, his gorgeous smile wide. “It’s from, er, 2003. Time goes fast when you’re old.” At 75, the Canadian musician’s spiritual blend of minimalism, new-age electronica, folk and lieder-style singing is having a moment, spurred on by a reissue of his 1986 album Keyboard Fantasies in 2017, and this year’s rerelease of 2004’s cosmic Primal Prayer, alongside a film, and his first ever world tour.
Tonight he plays for the first time with a new band, the Pangea Players, their synthesisers, clarinet and double bass creating a warm bath of spectral sound behind him. Opening song Ever New lays the template for the hour: soft, pentatonic arpeggios rolling behind lyrics that immerse us in a profound appreciation of nature and life. “Welcome the spring / the summer rain,” Glenn-Copeland sings, belly-deep, his voice a shivery, haunted relative of Nina Simone’s. “Welcome the child whose hand I hold / welcome to you both young and old / we are ever new.”
Wise but playful on stage, his between-song chat is deeply informed by the Buddhism he’s been practising, he tells us, for 48 years. There’s also a sweet naivety to his music that echoes his past as a children’s TV regular (he composed for Sesame Street and Canadian series Mr Dressup, in which he also performed). La Vita is a highlight tonight, sounding like a wayward trance classic, the stunning baritone of Alex Samaras pushing its propulsiveness to higher planes. So too is Harbour, an unapologetically sentimental love song written for Glenn-Copeland’s wife.
Then there’s his version of the spiritual Deep River. Sung alone, it ends with him hand-drumming – solo, syncopated rhythms emerging from his hands as naturally as the air flowing through the room. Not every song reaches the spiritual high of that moment, but when the notes of Let Us Dance fall like glass pebbles, or his voice expands once again, this music is impossible to resist.
• At Yes, Manchester, 8 November, and touring.
