Glen Hansard Funeral Held at Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral
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- The funeral of Glen Hansard is set for Tuesday at Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral, featuring musical performances by friends and family, following his death in a motorcycle crash in Dublin last week at age 56.
- Hansard won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Original Song with Markéta Irglová for the low-budget musical romance Once; the pair released three albums together as The Swell Season.
- Hansard fronted The Frames, which he formed one year before The Commitments (1991) and which recorded six studio albums including the Irish chart-topper Burn The Maps.
- Bruce Springsteen said he was "heartbroken" as tributes poured in from Ed Sheeran and Bono; thousands of fans queued at a Monday public wake and signed a book of condolence in Temple Bar.
- Hansard founded a Christmas Eve busk in Dublin city centre in 2010 that attracted high-profile musicians including Sinéad O'Connor and Shane MacGowan and was called "an international Irish institution" by friend Colin Davidson.
- Hansard was still performing in a traditional music session in the hours before his death and had released five solo albums through 2023's All That Was East Is West Of Me; he had become a father three years ago.
Why it matters: The death of a 56-year-old Oscar winner and Frames frontman who was performing in a trad session in his final hours ends a chapter for Irish music: Hansard's annual Christmas Eve busk had become a Dublin institution drawing Sinéad O'Connor and Shane MacGowan, and fellow artists from Springsteen to Bono publicly mourned the loss of an artist who championed street-level charity for the homeless.
