Benjamin Dwyer Guitarist ~ Composer ~ Director & Artistic Director VOX21.

One of Ireland's foremost musicians, guitarist and composer Benjamin Dwyer studied at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Trinity College Dublin where he received a First Class Honours Degree and the McNamara Gold Medal for Excellence in Performance. He went on to study performance at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he was awarded a Masters Degree from the University of London. He was granted a full scholarship to study composition at Queen's University, Belfast, where he graduated with a Ph.D. In 2000 he was awarded a Post-Doctoral Research Post (in composition) at the Dublin Institute of Technology and presently teaches guitar at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin.

Dwyer made his concerto debut playing Rodrigo's 'Concierto d'Aranjuez' with the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany. He now regularly performs all over Ireland and has given concerts in Austria, Spain, France, Finland, Germany, USA and the Caribbean. He works regularly with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and has performed concertos by Vivaldi, Rodrigo, Arnold and Villa-Lobos. In 1998 he gave the first performance of his own 'Concerto for Guitar & Strings' with the Irish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Bruno Guiranna. He was soloist again in the same work with the National Symphony Orchestra in April 2001 at the National Concert Hall under Nicholas Kok.

Dwyer's compositions are performed and broadcast regularly in Ireland. He has been commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland ('Three Piano Pieces', 'Crow'); the Instituto Cervantes ('Concerto for Guitar & Strings'); RTÉ('Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra'); the National Concert Hall ('Crow's Vanity'); Artslab ('Scenes from Crow') and 'Voyages - Montreal/Dublin Festival' ('Omeros II').

Dwyer's music has been featured in the New Music Days Festival, Moldova; the Electron Musik Festivalen 1999' in Skinnskatteberg, Sweden; the Composers INK Festival, Dublin; Mostly Modern Festival & Series, Dublin; the AIC Festival of New Music and the Composer's Choice Festival at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. 'Rajas, Sattwa, Tamas', his Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra received its world première at the National Symphony Orchestra's Horizons Series in the National Concert Hall in April 2001 with Nicholas Kok conducting.

For the past ten years Dwyer has been very active as a promoter of new music and is Director and Artistic Director of Ireland's leading contemporary music event Bank of Ireland Mostly Modern Series & Festival. In 1999 he formed the new music group VOX21 which is now one of the most important ensembles in Ireland.

Dwyer was one the featured Irish composers in the recent 'Voyages - Montreal/Dublin Festival 2002' for which he was commissioned to write 'Omeros II' - a work for large ensemble & tape. Another recently completed large-scale work for amplified ensemble and tape - 'Scenes from Crow' - was premièred in January 2002. Dwyer was the featured composer in the 'Sligo Contemporary Music Festival 2002 where he gave the world première of his major work for solo guitar - Twelve Etudes.

He now shares his time between Andalucía and Dublin.