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A wistfully beautiful score and two new songs were created for American Wake by Seamus Egan, widely hailed as one of the world’s greatest Irish musicians, whose mastery also extends to pop, folk and other genres. Egan previously composed the score for the hit indie film, “The Brothers McMullen,” and co-wrote Sarah McLachlan’s Grammy-winning song “I Will Remember You.” He performed on the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning film “Dead Man Walking,” and composed the musical “Dancing on Dangerous Ground.” Hailed as a “multi-instrumentalist wizard,” Egan plays flute, tenor banjo, mandolin, tin wistle, low whistle, guitars, and bodhran. He is both a critically-acclaimed solo-recording artist and, since 1996, the leader of the renowned Irish music band, Solas.
In addition to composing, producing and performing on the soundtrack, Egan makes an appearance in American Wake as the Irish musician, “Mack.”
The songs he composed for the film, “Hold On” and “Enough Tears,” are sung by and co-written with Antje Duvekot, a vocalist and award-winning songwriter.
The “avant folk” quartet, Assembly, appears in the film, performing its own compositions. Sam Amidon, who stars as “Niall” in American Wake, co-founded the group – originally known as Popcorn Behavior -- when he was 13 years old. The other members include Sam’s brother Stefan, Keith Murphy and Thomas Bartlett. Steeped in the New England folk scene and in traditional Irish music, Assembly has impressed national critics with their radical reworkings of the genre, incorporating minimalism and creating, in their own words, a trance-like, dance-oriented rhythmic drive and meditative serenity.
The poetry for the film, and indeed the title, come from “American Wake,” a volume of poetry by Greg Delanty. A native of Cork, Ireland, Delanty now lives in Vermont, where he teaches at St. Michael’s College. He is a beneficiary of the Royal Literary Fund and a recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the Austin Clarke Centenary Poetry Award, among other honors. He is the author of five additional volumes of poetry: “The Blind Stitch,” “The Hellbox,” “Southward,” “Cast in Fire,” and “The Ship of Birth.”
