Glen Hansard
On 22 April 2006, he released his first album without The Frames, The swell season, on Overcoat Recordings in collaboration with Czech singer and multi-instrumentalist Markéta Irglová, Marja Tuhkanen from Finland on violin and viola, and Bertrand Galen from France on cello.  Hansard also spent part of 2006 in front of the cameras for a music-infused Irish movie Once, in which Hansard plays a Dublin busker, and Irglová an immigrant street vendor.  The movie had its American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 and received the Festival's World Cinema Audience Award.  During the promotional tour, he and Irglová began dating.  Said Hansard about his relationship with Irglova: "I had been falling in love with her for a long time, but I kept telling myself she's just a kid". One of the songs they wrote together for the movie ("Falling Slowly") won an Oscar for Best Song in February 2008. Hansard became the first Irish-born person to win in that category. Hansard and Irglová also recorded a version of Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" for the movie I'm Not There in 2007. In 2009, Hansard said that he and Irglova were no longer romantically linked, and that they are now "good friends."