Hundreds of mourners, musicians and fans gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin on Tuesday to say farewell to Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning singer-songwriter who died last week at 56, in a ceremony that brought together a remarkable gathering of people whose lives he had touched.
Among those present were U2 frontman Bono and Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, two artists who had shared both stages and a lasting friendship with him over the course of his career. Other musicians in attendance included Hozier, Declan O’Rourke and Imelda May, along with Markéta Irglová, who had been Hansard’s musical partner in the Swell Season and had won an Academy Award alongside him for the song Falling Slowly from the film Once. Actors Steve Coogan and Chris O’Dowd were also among those who came to pay their respects.
Bono offered a brief tribute, describing the impression Hansard left on everyone who encountered him, saying that people always remembered the day they first met him. He recited lyrics from a U2 song as part of his remarks.
Vedder joined Irglová in performing a song together during the service, a moment that offered those gathered a live expression of the musical community’s grief and the particular way musicians sometimes choose to mark loss.
A life remembered
Those who spoke and performed remembered him as an acclaimed artist who had also shaped the careers and personal lives of people around him through his generosity and the intensity of his engagement with other musicians. The tribute reflected a consistent theme since his death, as those who knew him understood that Hansard was more than a performer, but someone who invested genuinely in the people he worked alongside.
Hansard had spent years busking on Grafton Street in Dublin before the Frames, the Swell Season and his solo career brought him wider recognition. His Academy Award for Falling Slowly in 2008 introduced him to audiences who had not followed his music through those earlier years, but to the musicians who had known him before that recognition arrived, the award was a validation of something they had already understood about him.
The musicians who came
The presence of figures like Bono, Vedder, Hozier and Irglová speaks to the relationships Hansard built across his career. He was known as a collaborator and a generous supporter of other artists, and those relationships extended across generations and genres. The gathering at St. Patrick’s Cathedral reflected both the breadth of his musical connections and the depth of feeling those connections carried.
Irglová’s presence was particularly significant. She and Hansard had worked together for years, and their Swell Season partnership had been built on a genuine creative and personal closeness. The song she performed with Vedder allowed her to bring something of the music into a moment of collective mourning.
Dublin says goodbye
For Dublin, Tuesday’s service was a moment of civic as well as personal loss. Hansard was a deeply local figure despite the international reach of his career, rooted in the city’s streets and musical scenes in a way that his fame never seemed to displace. The cathedral setting, one of Dublin’s most storied spaces, gave the farewell a weight appropriate to someone who had become part of the fabric of the city’s cultural life.
He died last week following a motorcycle crash on the outskirts of Dublin. He is survived by his wife, the Finnish poet Maire Saaritsa, and their young son, Christy.
