MARLA FIBISH and BRUCE VICTOR are NOCTAMBULE. They play original and traditional music in a variety of forms -- joining together poetry they have set to music, instrumental pieces, and traditional Irish tunes and songs. Their music is alive with lush beauty, sensitivity and humor on guitars in creative tunings, mandola, mandolin, cittern, accordion, tenor guitar, and their blended voices.
The name NOCTAMBULE, French for 'night-owl,’ comes from a Robert Service poem about a nocturnal ramble through the back alleys of Paris. THE WAKING, their newest release, features poetry-set-to-music along with some instrumental tracks. The poems, from Roethke, Auden, Hughes, Plath, Benet, and others, explore the vicissitudes, the inscrutability, and the ultimately indomitable nature of time. Their previous album, the critically acclaimed TRAVEL IN THE SHADOWS, explores forms of the ‘night journey’ in song, offering travelers the opportunity to see and experience the world differently once the usual sources of light subside. It features a variety of 'noctambulatory’ verse from Tennyson, Neruda, Roethke, St. Vincent Millay, and Robert Service.
MARLA FIBISH is a prominent voice of the mandolin in Irish music, bringing a musicality and excitement to the tradition that is not often heard on the mandolin. She is also known for her compositions, musical settings of poetry and instrumental pieces that have been featured in her work with Out of the Rain, and Three Mile Stone, and on her recording with Jimmy Crowley, The Morning Star. In addition to the mandolin, Marla brings mandola, tenor guitar, bouzouki, accordion, and her alto voice to the Noctambule sound. More at www.marlafibish.com.
BRUCE VICTOR is an eclectic and accomplished guitarist and composer, who plays several different guitars in several different tunings. Seemingly resisting any single musical genre, he has been labeled a 'poly-stylist’ by one of the editors of Acoustic Guitar magazine. He has played with The Sirens of San Francisco, The Triplicates, and as a solo performer. He was the founder of The Acoustic Vortex, a non-profit musical organization that produced house concerts, mentored youth performers, and performed benefit concerts for other non-profit organizations. He is also a practicing psychiatrist and was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
"The irregular phrases, unpredictable meters and strangely beautiful harmonies...overlapping voices, guitars, and mandolins conjure a nocturnal world in which the words of some of our finest poets take shape and snap together magically like recently discovered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Travel in the Shadows is folk music at its best--hand made, without a template.’
—Alex DeGrassi
"Just occasionally in music, something comes along that just works and when it does it works to perfection, Noctambule is just that."
—Tim Carroll, Folkwords
"The arrangements have the kind of genius that reflects lives lived fully, souls not unscathed, but with glittering musical imaginations grounded in joyful glorious experience. The playing is simply beautiful, and the interplay between Bruce's moving, deft yet muscular guitar playing and Marla's always magic mandolin reminds me of watching two strong dancers moving together, creating so much more than the sum of the parts
—Kevin Carr, Folkworks
You will find links to tracks and videos at www.noctambulemusic.com. Noctambule's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bvictormd/
