Academy Award-winning Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin early on Wednesday, his management said. He was 56.
ATC Management told broadcaster RTE that Hansard’s family was “deeply shocked and heartbroken” by his death.
Irish police said a man in his 50s died in a single-vehicle motorcycle crash in Lucan on the outskirts of the Irish capital before 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday. The man, who they did not name, was treated at the scene but was pronounced dead a short time later.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Glen Hansard.”
“A talented musician and actor who made a significant contribution to Ireland’s cultural landscape over many years,” Martin posted on X.
A post on Hansard’s social media pages read, “We are still dealing with the shock of it all, so we kindly ask that the privacy of Glen’s family, colleagues and friends is respected at this difficult time.”
WATCH | Hansard in conversation with CBC’s Q in 2015:
Inspired by songwriting legends
Hansard combined acting and a musical career. He played a member of a Dublin soul band in the 1991 movie The Commitments and won an Oscar in 2008 for the song Falling Slowly from the film Once, in which he starred alongside Marketa Irglova. Once was later adapted for the stage, winning eight Tony awards, including best musical, in 2012.
Hansard was the long-serving frontman for rock band The Frames, half of the duo The Swell Season with Irglova and released solo albums including Didn’t He Ramble, which was nominated for a Grammy for best folk album in 2016 and was inspired in part by the death of his father.
Hansard and Irglova performed late last year with a Czech orchestra, and he had a string of solo dates throughout Europe scheduled through the end of this year.
In April, he played a solo acoustic set in Toronto.
For years, Hansard led the Christmas Eve charity busk outside Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, where members of the public gathered to see famous Irish musicians perform in aid of the Dublin Simon Community.
“Christmas Eve just won’t feel the same,” one social media user posted on X.
At the funeral for The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan in 2023, Hansard performed The Pogues’ song Fairytale of New York with Irish singer Lisa O’Neill, which prompted dancing in the aisles of the church.
He was also invited to perform at U.S. functions, including a White House celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in 2011, and two years earlier at the Cape Cod funeral for Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of former president John F. Kennedy.
In 2016, Hansard told CBC Music that he considered fellow Irishman Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen his “holy trinity” of musical influences.
Hansard said when he was 15, he was gifted a copy of Cohen’s greatest hits album and “absorbed” the Montreal poet-songwriter’s work.
“I breathed it in, I drank it, I fell utterly in love with Famous Blue Raincoat and the atmosphere and the energy and the particular oddness of it,” he said.
Hansard told CBC’s Q in 2015 that decades later, he got to sing that Cohen song in front of him at a tribute show.
In terms of his own work, Hansard told Q that in a world of disposable culture and products, he liked the idea of a song having a life of its own.
“If I write well, it might outlive me, it might live in someone’s living room for a hundred years, who knows,” he said.
Musicians paid tribute to Hansard as news broke of his death.
Bruce Springsteen, who shared a stage in the past with Hansard, called him “a great musician, a good friend and a generous and gracious man” on Instagram.
Bob Geldof and Pete Briquette, each from Ireland’s Boomtown Rats, paid tribute individually.
“Glen was wonderful,” said Geldof. “The universe lacks mercy or justice that such a sweet, thoughtful, burstingly talented man should be so wantonly and violently killed on an early Irish morning back road.”
Mike Scott, leader of the Waterboys, posted, in part: “Travel on well, Buddy. You made your dreams come true.”
Hansard is survived by his wife, Maire Saaritsa, and their three-year-old son, Christy.
