Volksbühne and Creamcake are pleased to invite you to two intimate concerts by an inter-generational avant-garde.
Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s oeuvre is a celebration of love: personal, spiritual, and universal. Moving fluidly between jazz-folk, classical composition, and ambient electronics, the singer, composer, and Black trans elder maps the emotional landscape of the heart, inviting us to feel and reflect on its enduring power.
Glenn-Copeland’s most recent studio album Laughter in Summer is a love letter. It’s a deeply personal collaboration with his wife and caretaker, eco-poet and producer Elizabeth Copeland, born from and a tribute to their nearly half-century-long partnership. The record arrives as Glenn-Copeland navigates a recent diagnosis of LATE—limbic-predominant Age-related TDP-43 Encephalopathy, a rare form of dementia. This performance at Volksbühne embraces the realities of illness and aging as the Glenn-Copelands explore their lifetime together.
Joining him, Damsel Elysium conjures an alternative world of sound, plants, and ritual. Through immersive musical “speakings”—ethereal whispers with double bass, piano, and field recordings—they trace deep connections between trees, sea, inner life, and the voices of nature itself, moving through grief toward reconnection.
Damsel Elysium explores the connections between the natural world and spirit world through metamorphic propositions. Working with alchemical elements, damsel will take us on a journey through shadow work and movement activation, eventually transforming self and space into “Other Light” revealing the world we do not see, ‘supernature’ while referencing the sight and perception of animals and natural phenomena such as birds, floras and bees, where they can see spectrums that the human eye cannot fathom. damsel embodies the lessons of nature’s creatures being in transition and transformation, in migration or acting as messengers between the spirit realm and ours, creating a new mythology.
Together, the evening reminds us that in a time of unraveling, loss and love are inseparable—and that one gives meaning to the other. Encountering illness, aging, and mortality, we are invited to discover rituals and practices that offer grounding, even as fear grows more frequent.
