Chief Francis O’Neill Irish Music Festival, Tiburon

See website for details of festival

CHIEF FRANCIS O’NEILL –  The Man Who Saved Irish Music – An incredible life.

A photo presentation on the history and achievements of a man, bigger than life, who the Irish government acknowledges for his contribution to the preservation of Irish culture. See the website section, The Story, for a preview of what is in store at this presentation. Servino’s Ristorante – 2nd Floor – 7:00 to 8:00 PM

ACCOMPANIED BY A TASTING of TEELING IRISH WHISKEY

“MUSIC AROUND THE TOWN”
Irish Night in Tiburon
8 pm to 10:30 pm

Friday night, the 26th will be a night of music at multiple venues throughout the town. Call it a pub crawl. The best Irish musicians from Northern California will be playing from 8 PM to 10:30 PM. People will be encouraged to go place to place to experience different forms of Irish music. A drawing will take place for the use of a luxury car to use for a weekend for those who visit at least 5 venues.

THE VENUES
Servino’s Bar – FIDDLER, JOHN CAULFIELD & Friends
Multi piece group playing the best of traditional Irish music.

Caffe Acri – KYLE ALDEN, PATRICK BALL
Music to savor – Traditional Harp, Irish story telling and Irish classical guitar to the poetry of W. B. Yeats.

Sam’s Anchor Cafe – LUCIA COMNES and BURKE TRIESCHMANN
Fiddle, guitar, harmonica and beautiful singing

Tiburon Wine Shop – BRUCE VICTOR AND MARLA FIBISH
Spectacular guitar and mandolin players

Schoenberg Guitar Shop –  PATRICE HAAN
Irish harp at it’s finest

A drawing will be held for the use of a luxury car for a weekend plus a night’s stay for two at a romantic country inn.

2016 MUSICIANS PROFILES

MARLA FIBISH is one of the leading exponents of mandolin in Irish music, bringing a musicality and excitement to the tradition that is seldom heard on the instrument.  Her dynamic playing is featured both on her CD with Three Mile Stone, and on The Morning Star, a duo CD with Jimmy Crowley, an all-instrumental project which features Irish music on an array of mandolin-family instruments – mandolin, mandola, mandocello, bouzouki, and dordan. In addition to the mandolin, Marla plays mandola, tenor guitar and button accordion. She sings and writes music, and is known for her musical settings of works from a variety of poets. This work is featured in her current duo project Noctambule, with guitarist and husband Bruce Victor. An experienced and sought-after teacher, Marla teaches private students, and has been a staff instructor at many music camps, including The Mandolin Symposium, The Swannanoa Gathering, O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat, Portal Irish Music Week and others.
www.marlafibish.com
www.noctambulemusic.com

BRUCE VICTOR is an eclectic and accomplished guitarist and composer, who plays several different guitars in several different tunings. In addition to Irish music, his interests span many additional genres — he has been labeled a ‘poly-stylist’ by one of the editors of Acoustic Guitar magazine. His current primary endeavor is Noctambule, his collaboration with Marla Fibish in which they create original musical settings of a broad array of poetry.  In addition, 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.
www.noctambulemusic.com

PATRICE HAAN is a harper, singer, songwriter, composer and wordsmith, devoted to the healing presence of listening.  Patrice has an ear for melody, a heart for feelings and a gift for lyrics which she combines into beautiful music, whether singing and playing her own songs or interpreting others’ creations.  As well as playing therapeutic music with Healing Muses, a non-profit that provides music for healing in local hospitals, Patrice is increasingly being recognized for her songwriting and poetry.  Her tunes are often described as “beautiful, gorgeous, poetic and evocative, healing our souls and our heartache with the palpable love and the poetry of the music.”  Besides her intuitive and poetic harp compositions, Patrice is best known for her sultry and seductive vocal performances with Tony Marcus in the Oakland-based jazz ensemble Leftover Dreams.  For more information about her four albums of music, visit www.PatriceHaan.com.

2015 FESTIVAL MUSICIANS

AUTUMN RHODES – (flute, concertina, tin whistle, and uilleann pipes) was raised in a household full of Irish music. At the age of 12, while living in rural Indiana, she was given a tin whistle for a birthday present and took to it right away. She hasn’t looked back – she started performing professionally the next year and hasn’t stopped since. Throughout the years she’s toured throughout the United States with bands such as Soltré, Míra, The Colleens, Purest Green, Edington, Barton, & Rhodes, The Bardic Apostles, Kennedy’s Kitchen, and The Wrenboys; she has played for various Irish dance groups including Siamsa, Celtic Fire, and Kaleidoscope, and has partnered up with piper Tim Hill, multi-instrumentalist Julie Henigan, sean-nós dancer Maldon Meehan, harpist Susan Mashiyama, among others. She now lives in San Francisco where she teaches music and performs with several bands and individual performers.

BRUCE VICTOR is an eclectic and accomplished guitarist and composer, who plays several different guitars in several different tunings. In addition to Irish music, his interests span many additional genres — he has been labeled a ‘poly-stylist’ by one of the editors of Acoustic Guitar magazine. His current primary endeavor is Noctambule, his collaboration with Marla Fibish in which they create original musical settings of a broad array of poetry.  In addition, 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.
www.noctambulemusic.com

DAVID J. WINTER has appeared on stages throughout the western United States, including five world premiere productions in Los Angeles and in San Francisco. At the Berkeley City Club in 2002 he was seen as King Magnus in W.I.T.’s production of Shaw’s The Apple Cart . On San Francisco Bay, aboard the windjammer C.A. Thayer, he played the lead role of Driscoll in the repeatedly extended run of Eugene O’Neill’s Four Plays of the Sea which won the Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Award. With his colleagues, “Six White Writers Sitting Around with Their Clothes On” he played seven different roles in their original show Buncha Buncha Grapes, which won the top prize “Best of the Festival” in the 1995 San Francisco Fringe Festival. As a director his credits include Master Harold…and the Boys, The Dresser, and That Championship Season, among others. He has been a Highland Piper for over fifty years, but, having been told that the Uilleann Pipes require a lifetime to master, he waited to take them up until the age of sixty, in order to save time.

JOHN CAULFIELD began playing Irish Traditional music as a teenager growing up in Dundalk, County Louth (the wee county) in the mid 1960’s. His father and most of his uncles were fiddle players based in nearby county Monaghan.
He and his friend, Imor Byrne, put their shillings and pence together and bought a copy of O’Neill’s “1000 and one gems of Irish music” in 1969. They somehow learned 1002 tunes from it; there will be a recount one of these days.

KEITH DUBINSKY – Keith Dubinsky (tenor banjo) is a Bay Area architect and a regular at several local Irish traditional music sessions. Starting out as a mandolin student of Marla Fibish’s over a decade ago, he has recently embraced the tenor banjo and continued to deepen his knowledge of the tradition. He is grateful for the amazing Irish music community here in the Bay Area and for the many friends from Ireland he has made playing the music.

MARLA FIBISH is one of the leading exponents of mandolin in Irish music, bringing a musicality and excitement to the tradition that is seldom heard on the instrument.  Her dynamic playing is featured both on her CD with Three Mile Stone, and on The Morning Star, a duo CD with Jimmy Crowley, an all-instrumental project which features Irish music on an array of mandolin-family instruments – mandolin, mandola, mandocello, bouzouki, and dordan. In addition to the mandolin, Marla plays mandola, tenor guitar and button accordion. She sings and writes music, and is known for her musical settings of works from a variety of poets. This work is featured in her current duo project Noctambule, with guitarist and husband Bruce Victor. An experienced and sought-after teacher, Marla teaches private students, and has been a staff instructor at many music camps, including The Mandolin Symposium, The Swannanoa Gathering, O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat, Portal Irish Music Week and others.
www.marlafibish.com
www.noctambulemusic.com

PATRICE HAAN is a harper, singer, songwriter, composer and wordsmith, devoted to the healing presence of listening.  Patrice has an ear for melody, a heart for feelings and a gift for lyrics which she combines into beautiful music, whether singing and playing her own songs or interpreting others’ creations.  As well as playing therapeutic music with Healing Muses, a non-profit that provides music for healing in local hospitals, Patrice is increasingly being recognized for her songwriting and poetry.  Her tunes are often described as “beautiful, gorgeous, poetic and evocative, healing our souls and our heartache with the palpable love and the poetry of the music.”  Besides her intuitive and poetic harp compositions, Patrice is best known for her sultry and seductive vocal performances with Tony Marcus in the Oakland-based jazz ensemble Leftover Dreams.  For more information about her four albums of music, visit www.PatriceHaan.com.

ROSIN LAFFERTY – Born in Co Galway, Ireland, Roisin had her first music lesson at the age of 3!   She quickly became competent on whistle and a variety of other instruments including  flute and fiddle.  Prior to the family relocation to California in 2007, Roisin had many tin whistle teachers, most notably the renowned Mary Bergin.   A seasoned Fleadh Cheoil competitor, Roisin has enjoyed considerable music competition success on both sides of the Atlantic.  Indeed she is still a valued member of  Tigh na Coille, a highly acclaimed grouping of young musicians in Co Clare, who have been the recipients of the highest accolades at national level in Ireland.  She rejoins this group/band every summer for the annual Fleadh Cheoil circuit through county, provincial and ultimately All-Ireland level. Roisin and her siblings recently completed the recording of their CD which is appropriately named “Reeling in the Redwoods..The Lafferty Family”.   Currently a High School Junior, Roisin plans to return to Ireland for her College Education.

RORY MCNAMARA – Since the 1970’s, Rory has been performing his own personal blend of Irish and American music and song. From the night spots of Berlin and Hamburg, the folks and music clubs of the British Isles to the festivals and night clubs of the San Francisco Bay Area, audiences have returned time and time again to  hear his heartfelt singing from a well chosen repertoire of songs.

Born near London of  English and Irish parents, it could be said that Rory’s musical career began at the age of ten when he played second ukulele in the Hottentots, a school skiffle band. “Hotter than hottest Africa” was their motto. www.rorymcnamara.com