BREWER – With one of the most original voices in music today, New York-based singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplansky will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, March 3, at Brewer Middle School. Proceeds will benefit Brewer Youth Theatre programs.

The Chicago native got her start playing the bars and clubs in her hometown, but in the years since, her music has taken her all over the world. She has recorded and performed with Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, Suzanne Vega, Bryan Ferry and Nanci Griffith. Her vocals have been on Colvin’s “Steady On” album, Griffith’s “Lone Star State of Mind,” the NBC Television show “Ed” and in Chevrolet’s national “Heartbeat of America” ad campaign.

In 1994, Colvin wanted to try her hand at producing and called her former singing partner. The resulting collaboration, “The Tide,” garnered critical acclaim and led Kaplansky to give up her full-time job as a clinical psychologist. Over the next few years she continued to release well-received albums, including “Flesh and Bone,” “Ten Year Night” and “Every Single Day.”

For her most recent effort, “The Red Thread,” Kaplansky wrote six original songs with her husband, New York University film professor Rick Litvin.

The songs are informed by several significant events in their lives, most notably the recent adoption of their daughter, Molly, from China, as well as their close proximity to Ground Zero during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Kaplansky said that an ancient belief proclaims that when a child is born, an invisible red thread reaches out from the child’s spirit to all the people who will be important in its life.

The album tells the story of the many threads that connect Kaplansky to people, time, place and especially to New York City. The Boston Globe called the songs on the new album “beautiful and thought-provoking.”

Tickets for Lucy Kaplansky are $20 and are available at Brewer Middle School, The Grasshopper Shop, online at www.brewertheater.com and at the door. For information, call 989-8640.