As one of the leading figures in Irish composition, a virtuoso guitarist and an innovative musicologist and curator, Benjamin Dwyer is one of the most multifaceted artists working today.
Since his European debut playing Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany), Benjamin Dwyer has been regarded as one of Ireland's leading musicians. A recipient of the prestigious Villa-Lobos Centenary Medal and the McNamara Gold Medal for Excellence, he has given concerts worldwide and has appeared as soloist with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic (Germany), the Santos Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), VOX21, the Vogler String Quartet (Germany) and the Callino String Quartet (London).
Dwyer’s compositions have been performed both nationally and internationally. He has been the featured composer at the Musica Nova Festival 2008 in São Paulo, the Bienalle of Contemporary Music of Riberão Preto 2009, the National Concert Hall’s Composers’ Choice and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s Horizons series. Over the last decade or so, his work has increasingly engaged with themes surrounding gender, sexuality and power, and he has stood firm against what he sees as the non-commitment and shiny surfaces of much postmodern music. Deeply entrenched in myth and symbol, his work combines harmonically eclectic formulae and an obsessive rhythmic drive with an innate virtuosity stemming from his own understanding of performance mastery. In recent years, he has completed a number of important large-scale works, including Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (Rajas, Sattva, Tamas), Concerto No. 2 for Guitar and Orchestra, his major virtuosic work for guitar – Twelve Études, his work based on the Crow poems of Ted Hughes – Scenes from Crow, his re-working of the Oedipus myth – Umbilical, and In Memoriam Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for orchestra.
Dwyer is at the forefront of promoting and engaging critically with contemporary music. He is Founder and Director of Ireland's leading contemporary music event MUSIC21, which has been running for almost two decades, and the new music ensemble VOX21. He is a regular contributor to Irish national radio and television, and his articles have been published in The Musical Times and The Journal of Music. Carysfort Press has published his book Constellations: The Life and Music of John Buckley. His chapter “Transformational Ostinati in György Ligeti Sonatas for Solo Cello and Solo Viola” appears in the book György Ligeti: Of Strange Sounds and Foreign Lands, which has just been released by Boydell & Brewer. He is currently at work on a book surveying the guitar music of Benjamin Britten.
Dwyer is an elected a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists established by the Arts Council of Ireland to honour those artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2009, the Royal Academy of Music (London) awarded Dwyer with the Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM), an honor bestowed upon those former students deemed 'to have made a significant contribution to the music profession'.
Benjamin Dwyer earned a PhD in Composition from Queen’s University (Belfast), an MMus in Performance from the Royal Academy of Music (London), and a BMus Hons from Trinity College Dublin. He is on the faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin.