• Lucy Kaplansky with Meghan Cary, two wonderful performers who know how to captivate an audience, will be performing Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Bryn Mawr Gazebo in Bryn Mawr.
Kaplansky started out singing in Chicago folk music clubs as a teenager. Then, barely out of high school, she took off for New York City. There she found a fertile community of songwriters and performers such as Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, The Roches and others.
With a beautiful flair for harmony, Kaplansky was everyone’s favorite singing partner, but most often she found herself singing as a duo with Shawn Colvin. People envisioned big things for them before Kaplansky left it all behind. Convinced that her calling was in another direction, she left the musical fast track to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology.
After completing her degree, Kaplansky took a job at a New York hospital working with chronically mentally ill adults and started a private practice. She was often pulled back into the studio by her friends, wanting her to sing on their albums. She harmonized on Colvin’s Grammy-winning “Steady On” and on Nanci Griffith’s “Lone Star State of Mind” and “Little Love Affairs.
” She also landed soundtrack credits, singing with Vega on “Pretty in Pink” and with Griffith on “The Firm,” and several commercial credits as well. Meghan Cary didn’t mean to be a musician. But when her fiancé unexpectedly died, she picked up his guitar, figured out how to play it and wrote .