Lucy Kaplansky

folk

Her songs are straightforward; crisp images, realistic stories, no equivocation, no suspicions that phrases owe their presence to a rhyming dictionary. New York City folkie Lucy Kaplansky co-wrote the majority of her latest CD, The Red Thread (Red House), with her husband, Rick Litvin. One song, "Land of the Living" is a profound but not cloying snapshot of the time just after 9/11. It was a trying period that made many of us think of family. It prompted Kaplansky and Litvin to adopt an infant girl from China. "Molly is 15 months old. We got her on Nov. 3," says Kaplansky. "It's been even better than I thought it would be. She's sweet, easygoing, beautiful and funny."

Kaplansky shares heartbreaking details about the orphan situation in China, "Only a tiny percentage will ever be adopted, and the poverty there is so pervasive." Her show in Bryn Athyn this weekend is part of a series of benefit concerts for Half the Sky Foundation (www.halfthesky.org) to try make life a little easier for the other Chinese children without families. She says her involvement with this organization has introduced her to a unique and wonderful community of adoptive families, including many who come to greet her husband and daughter at shows.

Fri., April 9, 8 p.m., $18-$21, with Martyn Joseph, Common Ground Coffee House, Mitchell Performing Arts Center, 800 Tomlinson Rd., Bryn Athyn, 215-914-4888.

—Mary Armstrong

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