Eoin French, October 2, 1987-August 11, 2024 Musicians from Ireland and around the world have been paying tribute to Cork musician Eoin French who passed away early last Sunday morning, aged 36, after a short illness. Dermot Kennedy dedicated ‘An Evening I Will Not Forget’ to French during a show in Nashville, saying, in a clip posted on Instagram: “Whatever we do here, whatever music happens, his music is so, so beautiful and he was such a beautiful person and so this is all in honour of him.” The Icelandic musician Olafur Arnolds, who French admired and collaborated with in recent years, said: “Eoin did more for me than I can put words to.
It was an absolute privilege to witness him at the peak of his creativity and I will always be grateful for every single minute of knowing him. He showed us how to live and also how to die.” Recording music under the moniker Talos, he released three albums: Wild Alee (2017), Far Out Dust (2019), and Dear Chaos (2022).
French played venues from Connolly’s of Leap in West Cork, which was like a home to French, to headlining Cork Opera House during the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival in 2018, and venues such as the Olympia in Dublin. He toured extensively and was a regular visitor to the US, and was a mainstay at festivals at home and abroad. His final show as Talos was at Waterford’s All Together Now in 2023.
Born in Kilcully, north of Cork city, his parents Paul and Angela, a network architect in the technology space and a disa.