Larry Kirwan is an expatriate Irish writer and musician, most noted as the lead singer for the rock band, Black 47, and conceiver/co-writer of Paradise Square, the Broadway Musical for which he received a Tony Award nomination.
Prior to Black 47, Kirwan and fellow Wexfordian Pierce Turner were the house band in Malachy McCourt's Bells of Hell in Greenwich Village. Their music was a blend of folk, trad, progressive rock, Celtic rock and punk. Turner & Kirwan of Wexford was one of the few groups banned from CBGB’s. In the words of Hilly Kristal they were "too demonic". They then led the new wave band Major Thinkers for some years. Their song Avenue B became a radio hit whereupon they were signed to Epic-Portrait Records. They recorded an album: Terrible Beauty, that was never released and after a performance in Irving Plaza on St. Patrick's Day 1985 they disbanded.
Kirwan then devoted himself to playwriting and the theatre. However, he continued to play improvisational music behind the poet, Copernicus, and in June 1989, the Copernicus band toured West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, and the USSR.