Nicola Lisle meets Oxford guitarist Manus Noble

It’s quite an eerie feeling, entering your former home for the first time in several decades. But that’s what happens when I go to meet local guitarist Manus Noble, who by coincidence lives in an Oxford house once occupied by my family. As we talk in the sunlit ground floor kitchen (much nicer than the basement kitchen of my youth), Manus laughs as he tells me why he took up the classical guitar at the age of seven.

“It was a complete mistake. I think they asked everyone in the classroom what instrument they’d like to play. I had this immediate image of me on a rock stage with an electric guitar in a band doing some hugely loud, inappropriate solo. So I said: ‘Yes, guitar, guitar’. Then I arrived at my first lesson, and the teacher handed me a half-sized classical guitar. I was too young to know any different, so I started plodding along with my scales, bit by bit.”

Manus, whose family originally comes from Ireland, went on to graduate with distinction from the Royal Academy of Music, and he has subsequently built up a career as an increasingly acclaimed soloist. Now he has released his first CD, entitled Nightshade, and it’s dedicated to his mother, father, and brother. So, I ask, are there other musicians in the family?

“My dad would never admit it, but he’s very good at the uilleann pipes, the Irish bagpipes — they’re not quite as raspy and annoying-sounding as bagpipes can be if played badly. He also used to play trumpet in his school orchestra. My granddad was a very good singer — he was actually made an offer by the BBC, but had a change of heart on the journey over from Ireland, and went straight back home again. My aunt was a member of the Bach Choir. So we do have amateur music in the family — and Irish people love a good jig and a dance anyway!”

Nightshade spans the musical spectrum all the way from Bach to the present day — for instance, the disc contains the world premiere recording of a piece with a real smile on its face, Gary Ryan’s Hot Club Français. A sleeve note explains that the repertoire has been selected for its “solitary, magical, and often seductive character”. Which begs the thought: the life of a professional guitarist is quite solitary, there aren’t many opportunities to mix it with an orchestra, except when a performance of Rodrigo’s famed Concierto de Aranjuez turns up.

“If you are booked for a concerto it will be the Aranjuez,” Manus agrees. “But yes, I do find the instrument strangely solitary — even while studying it, because guitarists are still slightly sidelined in terms of tuition: the guitar rooms are always either down in the deepest dungeons of the colleges, or right up in the top towers. But the guitar is becoming more mainstream, and new works are being written for interesting combos of guitar and other instruments. But I’m drawn to the solo repertoire personally, I do like the quite seductive, closed sound world.”

The final track on the CD has been composed by Manus himself, and is called Bunagee. “Ever since I was two or three, we’ve always gone to Bunagee in County Donegal, especially during the school holidays. There’s hardly anyone there, there’s just the sea air, the smells, and a completely different kind of colour palette as well. Live music is played in the local bar, and the Irish tune I quote, Starry Night, is always a favourite there. I use about ten seconds of it, then kind of rip it off a bit. I was a bit timid about putting my own composition on the CD!”

  • Nightshade is out now and available from manusnoble.com