Benjamin Dwyer
As one of the leading figures from the younger generation of Irish composers, 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), 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 Concert Orchestra, the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic (Germany), the Santos Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), VOX21, the Vogler String Quartet (Germany) and the Callino String Quartet (UK).
Dwyer's compositions have been performed both nationally and internationally. He has been the featured composer at the Music Nova Festival 2008 in São Paolo, the Biennale 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 engaged increasingly 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 Memorial Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for orchestra.
In 2009, the Royal Academy of Music (London) awarded Dwyer with the Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM), an honour bestowed upon those former students deemed 'to have made a significant contribution to the music profession'. Dwyer is on the faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and earned his PhD in composition from Queen's University Belfast.
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