Glen Hansard, the Irish singer and songwriter who catapulted to from relative obscurity to the stage of the Dolby Theatre with the film Once, has died at the age of 56. According The Irish Times, he was pronounced dead shortly after emergency services arrived at the scene of a motorcycle crash around 4:30 a.m. in western County Dublin.
Before his death, Hansard was a prominent figure in the Irish music world, thanks in large part to his role in front of the camera and behind the scenes on the 2007 indie romantic drama Once, directed by a former bandmate from the Frames, John Carney. The film became an instant sensation at that year’s Sundance Film Festival, ahead of a limited roll-out in the U.S. the following May.
Hansard penned the majority of the original songs on the soundtrack, including “Falling Slowly” with his partner in the musical duo the Swell Season, Markéta Irglová. In the film, the track served as foundational moment for the characters played by Hansard and Irglová — two nameless musicians living in Dublin — who go onto fall in love and record music together.
“Falling Slowly” became the Cindarella story of that year’s Academy Awards, beating out the estimable team of Alan Menke and Stephen Schwartz, who had three songs nominated from Enchanted.
The legacy of Once would continue on beyond the Oscars that year, as Hansard was also up for two Grammys for the soundtrack that following year. Four years after the film’s release, a Broadway musical based on Once (and starring Cristin Milioti) would debut and go onto sweep the Tonys, including winning Best Musical. Hansard would eventually win a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album off of the stage production.
But Once was not Hansard’s first experience with film. His time with the Frames put him on the radar of director Alan Parker, who cast him as guitarist Outspan Foster in the 1991 film The Commitments.
After the success of Once, Hansard (often performing with Irglová despite the two romantically separating) would continue to be a prominent figure in the world of folk rock and the Irish music scene. He participated as an interviewee and performer in the documentary Bono and the Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With David Letterman.
Bono posted a remembrance of Hansard to U2’s official Instagram, which read in part, “Seriously, he was such an angelic presence… not otherworldly… in fact, very present this presence… A smiling rascal if you needed him to be… this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun… no airs, plenty of graces…”
