A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, the Royal Academy of Music, London, and Queen’s University, Belfast (where he earned his Ph.D. in composition), Benjamin Dwyer is one of Ireland’s foremost classical guitarists and composers. He has performed as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Neubrandenberg Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany), the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the RTE Concert Orchestra, the Santos Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), the Vogler Quartet (Germany), the Callino Quartet (UK), and new music ensemble VOX21. Dwyer is considered one of the leading Irish composers of his generation and has received commissions from RTÉ national television and radio, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, RTÉ Lyric fm radio, Ensemble Madrid, Bradyworks from Canada, the Music Network, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and the Instituto Cervantes, among others.
In the past five years, Dwyer has composed a number of important large-scale works, including Scenes from Crow (a major work for large ensemble, tape and video by visual artist David Farrell based on the Crow poems of Ted Hughes), Rajas, Sattva, Tamas (Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra), the ground-breaking Twelve Études for guitar, and his Concerto No. 2 for Guitar and Orchestra, written renowned Brazilian guitarist Fabio Zanon.
Dwyer has made a vast contribution to new music in Ireland as a performer, curator, and composer. He founded the Mostly Modern series in 1990 (now known as MUSIC21), which has become one of Ireland’s central platforms for contemporary music, and he is also a founder-member of VOX21. He appears regularly on Irish national television and radio as a performer and commentator and has written extensively on contemporary music for journals, including the Journal of Music in Ireland and the Musical Times.
In 2006, he was elected as a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists established by the Arts Council to honour those artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. His contribution was further recognised in 2009 when the Royal Academy of Music, London, made Dwyer an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM)