Honored onscreen and in sound, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, a messenger whose time is now

Beverly Glenn-Copeland, or Glenn as he's known to friends, compares himself to a radio that's tuned to pick up certain frequencies. These ideas and sounds, which typically defy classification, come to him by way of what he calls the "Universal Broadcast System." He sees his role as merely to receive and transcribe them, then send them back into the world as music.

Born in 1944, Copeland grew up in a planned racially integrated Philadelphia community known as Greenbelt Knoll. His father was a pianist, and his mother sang spirituals. Copeland left at age 17 to study classical music at