Oscar-winning musician Glen Hansard dies

Tributes pour in after Irish singer-songwriter killed in a motorcycle crash

DUBLIN:

Oscar-winning Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard, whose haunting duet 'Falling Slowly' earned an Academy Award and introduced his music to a global audience, died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin early Wednesday. He was 56.

Hansard's management company confirmed his death, saying he died following a road traffic accident in the Irish capital. Police said a man in his 50s was killed in a single-vehicle motorcycle collision in west Dublin after emergency services were called shortly before 4:30 am. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A towering figure in Irish music for more than four decades, Hansard rose from busking on the streets of Dublin as a teenager to international acclaim as the frontman of rock band The Frames and later as one half of folk duo The Swell Season with Czech singer-songwriter Marketa Irglova.

Hansard won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008 for 'Falling Slowly', performed with Irglova in the acclaimed independent film 'Once'. The low-budget film, which followed a Dublin street musician who falls in love with a young Czech immigrant, brought his music to a worldwide audience and was later adapted into a Broadway musical that won eight Tony Awards in 2012.

Receiving the Oscar from actor John Travolta, an astonished Hansard famously said: "What are we doing here? This is mad."

He later released several solo albums and received a Grammy nomination in 2016. Before starring in 'Once', his only acting role had been as a member of the band in Alan Parker's 1991 film 'The Commitments'.

Tributes poured in from across the music world and Ireland's political leadership.

Bruce Springsteen, who had shared the stage with Hansard, said he and the E Street Band were heartbroken by the loss of "a great musician, a good friend and a generous and gracious man."

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin described Hansard as an artist who made "a significant contribution to Ireland's cultural landscape."

U2 frontman Bono remembered Hansard as "this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun" and praised his compassion for people experiencing homelessness. "He could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK," Bono wrote on X, describing him as the "voice of the streets" and "a choir of angels in one man."