Irish musician and Oscar winner dies in Dublin motorcycle crash aged 56
Padraic Halpin
Dublin: Irish musician Glen Hansard, who won the 2008 Oscar for Best Original Song for the independent film Once He was the frontman of rock band The Frames and died in a motorbike crash in the early hours of Wednesday (Dublin time), aged 56, his management company said.
Bruce Springsteen, with whom Hansard shared the stage, said he and his band were heartbroken by the death of “a great musician, a good friend, a generous and gracious man.”
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin described him as an artist who “made a significant contribution to Ireland’s cultural landscape”.
The singer-songwriter began busking on the streets of his hometown Dublin at the age of 13 after leaving school and founded The Frames in 1990. The band’s popularity within the country also helped.
establishing their lead singer as a fixture on the Irish music scene for the next four decades.
U2 frontman Bono paid tribute to Hansard in a post on
Bono said Hansard “would never walk past a person living in distress without checking to see if they were OK” and praised his work to reduce homelessness.
Bono said, “The voice of the streets. A choir of angels in one man.”
Fight against homelessness
Hansard has released a number of albums under his own name – for which he was nominated for a Grammy in 2016 – and as part of the duo The Swell Season with fellow Oscar winner Once leading actress Marketa
Irglova.
The duo’s performances and Oscar-winning duets in the low-budget film shot with handheld cameras, in which a street musician falls in love with a young Czech immigrant. Fall
SlowlyIt brought Hansard’s music to a much wider audience.
The film, which also featured other songs composed and performed by Hansard and Irglova, became a hit Broadway musical in 2012 that won eight Tony Awards.
A stunned Hansard, as he accepted his Oscar from presenter John Travolta, said: “What are we doing here? This is crazy.”
Only previous acting experience Once He was a band member on Alan Parker’s 1991 hit Commitments.
Many tributes also focused on Hansard’s philanthropic work and advocacy. His Christmas Eve tour, launched in 2010 at the depths of Ireland’s financial crisis, raised more than €2 million for the Dublin Simon Society charity, which on Wednesday described the singer as “a giant in the fight against homelessness”.
Bono, Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan attended the annual meeting in central Dublin. Hansard conducts rendition of the Pogues’ Christmas anthem New York Tale at his friend MacGowan’s funeral in 2023.
ATC Management said in a statement: “It is with broken hearts that we announce the death of Glen Hansard, who passed away in the early hours of this morning following a car accident in Dublin.”
expression.
A man in his 50s died after a single-vehicle collision with a motorcycle in west Dublin, Irish police said. Emergency services were notified shortly before 4.30am (Irish time) and the man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after being treated.
Hansard is survived by his wife, Maire Saaritsa, and their three-year-old son, Christy.
Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries, editing by Sam Tabahriti, Andrew Heavens and Nick Zieminski.
Reuters
