'Beautiful soul and towering talent': Emmet Kirwan on working with the late Eoin French/Talos
Emmet Kirwan in Accents. Picture: Ste Murray
When the Cork musician Eoin French died at the tragically young age of 36 last August, he left behind a bereft creative community. His impact could be clearly seen recently when a group of musicians came together on RTÉ’s Tommy Tiernan Show to give an emotionally charged rendition of 'We Didn’t Know We Were Ready', a song co-written by French at the Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival in Cork.
French, aka Talos, had a gift for collaboration, and for making friends, as writer and actor Emmet Kirwan can testify; he and French hit it off immediately when they met while recording a radio show. They stayed in touch, eventually fulfilling their wish of working together, despite the small matter of a pandemic getting in the way. The result was Accents, a play combining their poetic and musical talents, which had two sell-out runs in 2022.
