STRICT JOY

STRICT JOY

• The Swell Season - Strict Joy

The Swell Season are Glen Hansard (from the Irish band the Frames) and<br>Marketa Irglova (classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist). In 2007,<br>Once, a film about two people meeting and falling in love on the streets of<br>Dublin, became an indie phenomenon, as audiences everywhere responded<br>to the unassuming charm of the two leads, Glen and Marketa, and the<br>beautiful music they made together. On the way to going gold, the Once<br>soundtrack brought the Swell Season onto the stage of the Academy<br>Awards, where the band won the Best Original Song award, and into the<br>hearts of the audience and host Jon Stewart. Since then they have toured to<br>sold-out venues as the Swell Season, Once has become a perennial top DVD<br>rental and seller, and now the film is in development for a Broadway<br>musical to open early in 2010.<br>Now comes the much anticipated follow-up, Strict Joy, and from the first<br>notes of first track Low Rising, the musical magic audiences found in<br>Once is back. The band returns to map the rocky peaks and valleys of<br>relationships in songs like the haunting I Have Loved You Wrong, a<br>Marketa feature, and the driving, anthemic The Rain. A feature<br>documentary will make the festival rounds this fall, covering the making of<br>Once and Glen and Marketa s musical coming together, but in the<br>meantime, the beautiful songs of Strict Joy will tell their story.