INTERFERENCE & GLEN HANSARD (IRL)

Glen Hansard is returning to Jazz Tibet club after long 13 years. Like then, he's gonna perform be part of Přesahy festival. This year he's coming as a member of the legendary band Interference to honour their late frontman, singer, guitarist, pianist and composer Fergus O'Farrell.

Fergus O'Farrell was an artistic, interpretative and personal role model for the whole generation of the best of Irish musicians. He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at the age of eight with the perspective of ending up in wheelchair by twelve and dead before twenty. Thanks to his incredibly powerful will and above all, music, he was forced to use the wheelchair at nineteen and the illness ended up taking his life when he was nearly fifty. Due to circumstances the band\'s live performances were extremely rare but in the year 1990 they offered an opening spot to a folk duo called Blotto Brothers which consisted of twenty-year old Glen Hansard and Mic Christopher, who were as enchanted by O'Farrell's personal and artistic charisma as anyone who met him.

In 1995 the band released a self-titled album, played a few gigs and became " the most famous irish band not seen by many" for their generation. When the record labels were looking for next U2, they had Interference on their radar too. But the band never became famous or commercially successfull.

Interference lit the fire in many musical souls in the first half of 90s but the fire went out then. O'Farrell's health problems stopped him from performing live, the rest of musicians joined like-minded bands or disappeared to different fields. Fergus, having moved back to west Cork and settling next to his parents, continued writing. The band re-united with the new millenium, mainly thanks to Other Voices Tv series and their host - Glen Hansard. In the mid 2000s, despite O'Farrell's deteorating condition, the band performed at various concerts in Czech Republic and won the hearts of the audience. Fergus' "dances" with the wheelchair around mic became legendary and also a symbol of power that music and art can generate.

The success of the movie Once and his song Gold, whose theatrical version was chosen to be performed at Tommy awards for the best musical, came quite late for Fergus. In the last years of his life he wasn't able to play gigs anymore, had serious breathing difficulties. But he didn't give up. Not even then. He wrote his last songs with the help of the Iphone. Two weeks before his death he recorded with Glen Hansard, who upon signal was blowing the air into Fergus' lungs so he could then sing the next line.

Glen Hansard is going to bring O'Farrell's songs to life during four special gigs in Czech Republic this August, together with members of Interference. These gigs are meant to continue the series of celebratory gigs that took place in Ireland last February.and many stars of Irish music were involved.

Interference + Glen Hansard:

Glen Hansard: acoustic guitar and vocals
Paul Tiernan: acoustic guitar and vocals
John Fitgerald: bass guitar and vocals
James O’Leary: electric guitar
Camilla Griehsel Vearncombe: vocals
Bertrand Galen: cello
Maurice Seezer: piano and vocals
Cal McCarthy: drums