Swell Season

The distinctive and heartwarming duo of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who perform live as The Swell Season, are heading to Australia to play Fremantle Arts Centre on Sunday, January 25.

The Swell Season, made up of Hansard from the Irish band, The Frames and Irglova, a classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist, made headlines in February 2008 when they won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly”, beating out songs from the films Enchanted and August Rush. The song was also nominated for a 2008 Grammy award.

“Falling Slowly” was of course one of the beautiful songs from independent Irish film, Once, a low-budget romantic musical portraying struggling artists, which slowly won the hearts of audiences worldwide. At one stage, any kind of release for Once was in doubt following rejection by most film festivals. A Sundance Film Festival employee famously saw the film in Galway, Ireland, and took it back to the US, not aware it had already been rejected! It got in second time around, and the rest is history.