"A triumphant, sold-out, and emotional two hour show."
New York Times / Radio City Music Hall
"There are moments where inspiration, creativity and all out beauty combine in a way to make you feel like your heart might explode. To see The Swell Season is to have one of those moments."
KINK FM
"Glen and Marketa's voices expertly intertwine, his keening falsetto just as expert as his shouting, her upper register blessed with the legato loveliness of a violin. The triumph here lies in making master craftsmanship look easy, look natural, masking professional elegance in homely DIY denim."
Village Voice, NYC
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.
Hansard and Irglova have performed as a duo in relative obscurity since 2006, releasing an album together before Once was in theatres. In a case of life imitating art, or the other way around, the pair have become romantically involved since working together. As Hansard said recently at a Radio City Music Hall gig:
"A couple years ago, we decided to kick our ball as hard as we could, and see how far it would go. We were hoping it would reach the end of the garden, but we watched it go ... across the street, over the next town, into a place we'd never even heard of before. And the great thing about nights like this is that it sort of quiets the 1% of you that wishes you could have your ball back."
Don't miss this opportunity to see a truly unique and inspiring concert that is currently gathering ecstatic praise from audiences and critics in Europe and the United States.
Tickets go on sale Monday, November 10, and are available through heatseeker.com.au.
