Claudia Russell & the Folk Unlimited Orchestra
courtesy the artists
A collage of images of Claudia Russell and the Folk Unlimited Orchestra.
Claudia Russell and the Folk Unlimited Orchestra, clockwise from top left: Eric Lewis, Claudia Russell, Bruce Kaplan and James Kaplan.
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A musical friendship that began more than 25 years ago on the Wisconsin stages of American Folklore Theatre will come together again at Cafe Carpe on Friday, October 9, at 8:15 p.m.
Performing as Claudia Russell and the Folk Unlimited Orchestra, the quartet brings together singer-songwriter Claudia Russell, multi-instrumentalist Eric Lewis, Wisconsin composer and keyboardist James “Jimmy” Kaplan, and guitarist and mandolinist Bruce Kaplan.
For Wisconsin audiences, some of those connections go back a long way. Russell, Lewis and James Kaplan first worked together in 1999 and went on to perform in Goodnight Irene, Old Friends and Fish and Whistle, among other productions at American Folklore Theatre — now Northern Sky Theater — and Milwaukee Rep.
Russell later established a national career as a singer-songwriter, touring throughout North America with her husband and musical partner, Bruce Kaplan. A two-time Kerrville New Folk finalist and WUMB Artist of the Year, she has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and praised by American Songwriter, Sing Out! and other publications.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put it more simply: “Russell has a voice that is made for folk music. She breaks hearts.”
Eric Lewis shared the stage with Russell in several of those early AFT productions and has since become a familiar figure to Wisconsin audiences in his own right. A Tennessee native now based in Memphis, he plays guitar, Dobro, mandolin and pedal steel and has been a Door County summer fixture for more than 25 years. He has recorded and toured with artists including Amy LaVere, Jimbo Mathus and Robin & Linda Williams and received the Premier String Player Award from the Memphis chapter of the Recording Academy.
Lewis has also played on every album Russell and Bruce Kaplan have made — including their forthcoming Rocket to the Moon.
James Kaplan is familiar to generations of Wisconsin theatergoers as the composer of the music for Guys on Ice, the ice-fishing musical that has become something of a Wisconsin institution. His Northern Sky credits also include Fishing for the Moon, Northern Lights, Lumberjacks in Love, The Bachelors and Loose Lips Sink Ships, and he has spent decades there as a composer, musical director and keyboardist.
He is also Bruce Kaplan’s brother — which explains at least part of how this particular orchestra came together.
Bruce Kaplan, Russell’s musical partner for more than 25 years, adds electric guitar and mandolin, creating atmospheric arrangements and melodic counterpoint around Russell’s voice and guitar. Russell and Kaplan have released five albums and played roughly 1,000 shows together.
The Cafe Carpe concert comes as Russell and Bruce Kaplan prepare to release their sixth album, Rocket to the Moon, in early 2027. Produced by Julie Wolf, the new record expands well beyond the duo’s folk and Americana roots, with electric guitars, keyboards, strings and unexpected textures surrounding Russell’s songs. Lewis appears throughout the album, which is currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign running through October 18.
“We’ve all made a lot of music together over the years, but it’s rare to get the four of us on one stage,” says Bruce Kaplan. “This feels less like assembling a band than getting the old gang back together — and this time, the songs are Claudia’s.”
The Cafe Carpe show will mix songs from the forthcoming album with favorites from Russell and Kaplan’s catalog, with arrangements, harmonies and instrumental interplay shaped by four musicians whose paths have been crossing on Wisconsin stages since the last century.
