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Forthcoming Lectures and Seminars | | |
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17 April 2013 - 6pm, Grove Building, Middlesex University, London: Joint Seminar with renowned violist Garth Knox, ‘Transformational Ostinati in the Sonata for Solo Viola by György Ligeti’
24 and 25 April 2013, Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin: Musical Tales—One City One Book, ‘Irish Music and Strumpet City’. For further information see www.cmc.ie
1 May 2013 - 1pm, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin: Special Guest Lecture Series, ‘Transcendence as a System: Britten’s Reverse Variation Form’
3 May 2013, National University of Ireland, Maynooth: Professional Seminar on the Composer-Musicologist Relationship - ‘Sonic Symbiosis: The Relationship Between Composer and Musicologist’, Dr. John Buckley and Professor Benjamin Dwyer (joint presentation)’. For further information contact barbara.dignam@nuim.ie
4 May 2013, National University of Ireland, Maynooth: Seminar on Composition as Research, '"Grammars of Creation?" — Challenges in Articulating and Evaluating Composition as Research.' For further information contact jesse.ronneau@nuim.ie
21 February 2013, Dublin City University: MA in Sexuality Studies, ‘Excavating the Irrational—Gender and Tragedy in Music’
28 February 2013, Grove Building, Middlesex University, London: Middlesex University—Inaugural Professorial Lecture, ‘Excavating the Irrational—Gender and Tragedy in Music’
OTHER NEWS
Creative Connexions: Irish and Catalan Cultural Exchange takes place in DunLaoghaire on 23-26 May. The festival includes ‘The Cutting Edge’—an evening of contemporary music with featured composers Benjamin Dwyer and Ramon Humet in conversation (23rd May, 8pm). For details see: www.creative-connexions.eu
Benjamin Dwyer’s new work for Shakuhachi, jouissance…, will receive its world premiere at the 2013 European Shakuhachi Society’s Summer School Barcelona 25-28 July. For more details see: http://barcelona2013.shakuhachisociety.eu
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Strange Country | | |
Artscope and the National Concert Hall (in association with the Contemporary Music Centre and Poetry Ireland) present Strange Country—a retrospective of the music of Benjamin Dwyer. The concert will survey seven major works by Dwyer including the world première of
Strange Country for amplified narrator, uilleann pipes and tape. The evening will feature the talents of some of Ireland’s foremost musicians including saxophonist Kenneth Edge, William Dowdall, Izumi Kimura, piper Donnacha Dwyer, and Benjamin Dwyer on guitar. Dublin-based American poet Kimberly Campanello will perform her own poems in Strange Country. The concert will feature a special guest appearance by Irish poet Macdara Woods reading the poetry of Ted Hughes. Irish composer Kevin O’Connell will also interview Benjamin Dwyer following the interval.
DETAILS: Strange Country, National Concert Hall (Kevin Barry Room), Thursday 6th December, 8.30pm. Tickets: €15 (€12), NCH Box Office, Tel: 4170000
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Latest Publication | | |
Shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award 2012 for Creative Communication, György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds offers a new assessment of one of the most important composers of the 20th century. Among the contributors are eminent Ligeti scholars. Benjamin Dwyer's chapter entitled 'Transformational Ostinati in György Ligeti's Sonatas for Solo Cello and Solo Viola' presents a new insight into Ligeti's use of repetitive structures in his work.
...[this] book can be cordially recommended, fulfilling as it does the remit of a broad-based symposium while making for an absorbing read [...] what emerges from these pages is the extent to which Ligeti has remained on the forefront of European musical thinking. (Gramophone)
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Latest CD | | |
Irish Guitar Works is Benjamin Dwyer's latest CD recording. Following on from his previous groundbreaking Twelve Études (described by Fabio Zanon as 'the summation of an entire guitar epoch'), Irish Guitar Works features Dwyer collaborating with the renowned Callino String Quartet (UK) in a vibrant recording of his Guitar Quintet. The Guitar Sonata No. 1 by John Buckley, written for Dwyer in 1989, is a virtuosic tour-de-force, while Twelve Studies for Guitar sheds light on Dwyer's pedagogical concerns.
Most composers are virtuosos by proxy...Dwyer understands virtuosity from the inside. This probably explains aspects of his music that the rest of us can only partially grasp. This is most obvious in his writing for his own instrument where the meticulously notated score translates in performance into something free, almost on the cusp of improvisation.
(Kevin O' Connell, composer and member of Aosdána)
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New Commission from Garth Knox | | |
Benjamin Dwyer has just been commissioned by internationally renowned violist Garth Knox to compose a new solo piece. Garth Knox is at the forefront of the new music scene in many fields. Drawing on his vast experience as viola player of the Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble intercontemporain and his close collaboration with most of the leading composers of today, he has become a unique performer of music of many different styles, ranging from minimalist understatement to the cutting edge of new techniques and new technologies.
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Multimedia Project: Umbilical | | |
With the support of two major Arts Council Project Awards, Benjamin Dwyer has woven contemporary music, Japanese Butoh dance and video with contemporary theory to innovatively re-stage the Oedipus myth. Exploring the thematic dynamics of gender transgression and sexual desire, Umbilical revisits the Oedipus story, but this time from the perspective of an alternative protagonist, Jocasta - Oedipus's lover and mother. The music features the internationally renowned talents of Baroque violinist Maya Homburger, double-bassist Barry Guy and David Adams on harpsichord. Umbilical was premiered at Rua Red Performing Arts Centre, Dublin, in November 2011.
...[the] process of collaboration clearly sought to go beyond a superficial appraisal of the feminine. It succeeds because it is provocative, it resonates because it seeks to be honest, it challenges because it asks us to ask questions of ourselves as audience and onlooker, whether male or female. It is deeply psychological and seriously considered. It has an intensity that is disarming in its directness and which is painfully beautiful.
(Kathleen Tynan, Head of Vocal Faculty, Royal Irish Academy of Music)
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Recent Publication | | |
John Buckley is fortunate that in Benjamin Dwyer's Constellations: The Life and Music of John Buckley, he has found a combination of sympathetic understanding and critical distance that illuminates both individual works and the overall shape of the career. The primary audience for such a work is among performers, listeners, academics and students who wish to deepen their understanding of the composer. However, at a time when music is increasingly taking its place alongside literature and the other arts in Irish Studies, Constellations is also open to those with a less technical grasp of music. [It] fully deserves to take its place as a striking addition to the canon of music criticism...
(Barra Ó Séaghdha, Dublin City University)
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