RECORDINGS
PLAYDATE This project celebrates the friendship and musical connection between Marla and Rebecca that has blossomed over the past few years. Mixing original and traditional tunes, we mark some recent losses that offset the many joys. We hope that what comes through is the playfulness found between these friends and our joy in making music together. Released: January 17, 2025
"...a mature series of musical journeys that conjure a range of human emotions, from a celebration of life to the remembrance of loved ones gone past.... with a sound and with an ensemble that reminds me of the intimacy of a small session at home with friends." - Richard Gee, FolkWorks
“…absorbing and rewarding album…this duo plays new and old material with a lightness of touch and a togetherness which is a joy to hear.”
- Alex Monaghan, Irish Music Magazine
Guest musicians:
Steve Baughman, gourd banjo; Maureen Brennan, harp; Christa Burch, bodhran
Jimmy Murphy, guitar; Lewis Santer, bouzouki; Daniel Steinberg, Piano
Bruce Victor, guitar
NOCTAMBULE - EVERY MIGRANT IS MY FELLOW 2021 This album emerged from the current moment, characterized by large frightening shifts of populace and elements. It was a time of forced flights for survival, where the certainty of home is undermined by poverty, persecution, changing climate, famine and disease.
About 35 years ago, Marla found an old volume of poetry called “Songs from Vagabondia” in a used book store. Written by Canadian Bliss Carman and American Richard Hovey, it was one of 3 volumes of ‘tramp verse’ they wrote together between 1894 and 1900, the year of Hovey’s death. The poetry contained a care-free spirit and celebration of the natural world. It’s characters lived lives outside of conventional constraints.
Marla shared this volume with Bruce, and the two have set many of the poems to music, three of which are included here. We folded in other material that explores the topics of displacement, transition, migration…
Early in the pandemic, we soothed our own anxiety and isolation by performing a series of 40 concerts on Facebook Live, which we called ‘Serenade In Place.’ To our great joy, we began to realize it soothed others as well, and many joined us quite frequently.
One of those was Anita White, whose paintings grace this project. Her way of processing experience is through painting, and we will be forever grateful that she has shared many of them with us, and for the connection we now share. Most of the images here she painted while listening to us play during those dark days.
We hope the music and art of this project bring some solace during this time, as well as some reassurance that we are going through this, and will emerge from this together.
Bruce & Marla
THE BRIGHT HOLLOW FOG 2020 An intimate album of mostly solo and duo interpretations of mostly Irish music on mandolin and mandola, with brilliant guest performances from Martin Hayes, Keith Murphy, Steve Baughman, Bruce Victor and Rebecca Richman, beautifully mixed and mastered by Sean Keegan. The cover art is a painting by the astounding Vincent Crotty.
"There’s a sparkling brightness to the plucked double courses of strings of the mandolin, and a slightly darker tone to the lower-tuned mandola. The timbres are perfect for expressing both the melancholy and the hope built into the melodies of the instrumental tunes here...The mostly traditional music hits just the right emotional notes to offer much needed solace and comfort—and a feeling of intimacy—in these fraught times of distance and isolation. It's the sonic equivalent of a lace curtain wafting in a window, sunlight dappling a polished hardwood floor." -Derk Richardson, Peghead Nation
Full Review
"What a thrill this record is to me. To sit back and soak in the glory as Marla Fibish makes her mandolin sing the good old jigs and reels… it’s just magical." -Stuart Mason, Fiddlefreak.com
Full Review
NOCTAMBULE - A SWEETISH TUNE 2017
Irish traditional music, mixed with a few newer compositions in traditional forms, by others and by us. Our interpretations feature the tones and textures of our instruments in various conversations and combinations. Making the album turned out to be a wonderful journey of discovery, balancing personal blends of melodic exposition and harmonic frameworks, while hoping always to honor the tradition. Our project also includes a few songs - a traditional ballad, a new ballad based on a true and tragic story by a contemporary Canadian songwriter, and a Khalil Gibran poem that we set to music. We hope you enjoy it!
"There’s an old saying about couples making beautiful music together, metaphorically speaking. In the case of Noctambule, it’s more than a figure of speech." - Paul Liberatore, Marin Independent Journal Full Review
"...One line sums up Bruce and Marla's sound -- 'We blend in melted brilliance." - Clive Price, Irish Music Magazine Full Review
"...an unhurried, low-key quality to it, but also an understated intensity and purposefulness -- a different sort of listening experience for many Irish Music aficianados, but a worthwhile one." - Sean Smith, Boston Irish Reporter Full Review
THE WAKING, released in 2015, is mostly poetry-set-to-music, with a couple of original tunes thrown in for good measure. While we did not set out to write a ‘theme’ album, it wound up being one. The title comes from Theodore Roethke’s poem of the same name. The poems that we selected for this album address the vicissitudes, the inscrutability, and the ultimately indomitable nature of time. The poems come from Roethke, W.H. Auden, Stephen Vincent Benét, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Jenny Joseph. The offerings range in tone from direly sombre to provocatively giddy; the offerings include a waltz, a slow air, many of our usual tough-to-categorize songs, and one that could even get filed under R&B. Our voices and instruments: mandolin, mandola, Greek bouzouki, accordion, cittern, tenor guitar and guitars. Special Guests include Nuala Kennedy, Aryeh Frankfurter, Jeri Jones, Athena Tergis and Tom Neylan.
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
Full Review
...poetry set magnificently to original music...exquisite excursions into daydream worlds...like taking a tour of a dozen regions of the land of the human soul...induces a trance of the most luxurious kind. -- Kevin Carr, Folkworks
Full Review
TRAVEL IN THE SHADOWS — NOCTAMBULE’S DEBUT ALBUM — 2013
Our Album is about night journeys -- but if the night is its usual metaphor, then this project is really about the process of attempting to get from one place to another, from here to there without the usual, obvious and dependable sources of light. It means we must use other guideposts t0 re-orient ourselves. There is the implicit necessity to put our faith both in ourselves as well as in unseen forces and hands, given the absence of the usual progress markers. Destinations can become elusive, unexpected or nonexistent. At the end of the day (so to speak), it is about the journey and how we conduct ourselves through it.
The absence of the obvious sources of light will stimulate or unleash any number of emotional states: exhilaration, loneliness, love, and especially shifting degrees of trepidation, anxiety, and terror. Sadness is de rigueur for many reasons, none of which will be elaborated upon here. Perhaps the idea is to shift our perspective from looking at these states not merely as reactions to the journey, but also as one's assigned traveling companions.
The songs that we have selected seem to be about solo journeys. The night journey is a mucky trek through the marshes of one's own soul, with the annoying squishy sounds of one's own faltering boots as the principal soundtrack. The sense of isolation certainly darkens the shade of the darkness. But perhaps the journey resolves once we make a peace with loneliness, and in so doing, find new sources of connectedness. It is a journey that we all make alone together.
And getting our Night Journey Program under way, we start with Insomnia, untethering ourselves from our usual biological rhythms so that we can be more facilely hurled into The Night. But with any modicum of luck we return (con) Recuerdo, and like the inadvertent singing passengers, we are very tired but very merry, having emerged from waters that otherwise might have engulfed us. We return to the safety and familiarity of the ground from which we left; but it is more sacred ground for having made the Night Journey...
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
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
..deeply moved and impressed! Ambitious and evocative theme, wonderfully chosen texts, beautiful and intricate arrangements, and highly polished performances, both musically and sonically.
-Neal Stulberg, Music Dept Chair & Director of Orchestral Studies, UCLA
So listen again, and again, and in time, in short order, in fact, Travel In the Shadows will cast a certain spell you’ll be anxious to revisit...
- Deep Roots Magazine
...a superb album that deftly presents well-played, spare but beautiful musical arrangements of heartbreaking, classic American and other poems sung tenderly without guile or false sentimentality, all wrapped lovingly around the theme of the night and how it has influenced and informed many poets over time. It has many layers, and you will not hear or realize them all with only one listen. It is new music played elegantly.
- Anonymous online purchaser
THE MORNING STAR 2011 Mando-lovers rejoice!
Marla teamed up with Jimmy Crowley to create a unique and delightful recording of Irish music played only on double-strung instruments. Though the world knows Jimmy as a great singer, this is an all instrumental album featuring traditional tunes of all sorts, along with an original or two from each of them, played on mandolin, mandola, mandocello, bouzouki, and a big bass bouzouki called a dordán. The project was hatched over an evening of playing tunes together at Marla’s house on one of Jimmy's trips through the Bay Area back in 2009. It was recorded in three busy days in April 2010, and released in April 2011.
Absolutely stunning...a thorough winner. - LiveIreland
Great recording by two of the best; a must have CD for any mandolin or bouzouki player in Irish music. -- Dennis Cahill
…unique and delightful...a joyful romp --Fiddlefreak Folk Music Blog
a must for all who are interested in the mandolin family of instruments, in Irish music in general, and in exquisite duet playing. --Folkworks
THREE MILE STONE
Marla Fibish, Erin Shrader, and Richard Mandel. They serve up traditional Irish music with lift, drive, and sparkle. On their debut album, produced by John Doyle, tight mandolin and fiddle duets with driving guitar backup give way to poignant airs, traditional songs, or poems set to breathtaking melodies by Marla. Their signature sound is all strings: fiddle, mandolin and guitar, with infectious playing, and inventive tune and song arrangements, in which any instrument might take the melody or play backup. Their repertoire includes familiar tunes and odd ones, a melding of Erin, Marla, and Richard’s repertoire across the decades and the miles. Driving reels, lively jigs, and catchy polkas from Ireland, not to mention a smattering of Quebecois and other styles, come together with a sound all their own.
A wonderfully played album...performed by a tasty trio of real musicians and singers. If you really like Irish music, and don't just say you do, get this album. A total winner, front to back. Your ears will thank you. A very thoughtfully and tastefully presented stunner.
—Irish American News
Three Mile Stone members... play Irish Traditional Music with the respect and love that it deserves. They've created a work of art....And the songs are a delight. I love this stuff.”
—Billy McComiskey (Irish accordion legend)
…an excellent recording of Traditional Irish music and song. From the quality of the recording to the standard of musicianship, coupled with the choice of material, and the lovely playing and singing has produced a delightful recording.”
—James Kelly (legendary Irish fiddler)
The tunes are delightfully tastefully managed..., with a joyous inherent gusto....As purveyors of Irish music go, Three Mile Stone are indisputably in the top bracket, and you’re seriously unlikely to come across a much more elegantly persuasive and genuinely uplifting small-ensemble record than their eponymous debut."
—David Kidman, The Living Tradition magazine
An elegant small-ensemble recording. Some the best mandolin playing in Irish music.
—Dennis Cahill (guitar virtuoso, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill)