A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, the Royal Academy of Music, London and Queens University, Belfast (where he received his Ph.D) Benjamin Dwyer is one of Ireland's foremost musicians. Equally known as a guitarist and as a composer, Dwyer has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Neubrandenberg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Santos Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), the renowned Vogler Quartet and new music ensemble VOX21. He has perfomed world-wide from New York to Vienna and is a regular visitor to all the Irish music festivals. 
His performances are distinguished by a complete technical command of his instrument allied to a strict affiliation to the text while his programming has always reflected the latest innovative aspects of the repertoire. In recent years he has explored music beyond the boundaries of classical music and has formed Tango Society (a group specializing in Tango and which released its first CD La Historia del Tango in 2006) and has worked extensively with Irish jazz legend Mike Nielsen in a highly innovative project of free-improvisation. They recently released their first CD (Evolution) which features a mix of Dwyer's improvisatory explorations of his own guitar compositions and Nielsen's cutting edge idiom.
Dwyer is considered to be one of the leading composers of his generation in Ireland and has received commissions from RTÉ national television & radio, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, RTÉ Lyric fm radio, Bradyworks from Canada, the Music Network, Ensemble Madrid and the Instituto Cervantes among others. He has in the past five years composed a number of important large-scale works including Rajas, Sattva, Tamas (Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra), his ground-breaking Twelve Études for guitar and his Concerto No. 2 for Guitar and Orchestra which he wrote for the renowned Brazilian guitarist Fabio Zanon.
Benjamin Dwyer's contribution to new music in Ireland has been vast. He founded the Mostly Modern series in 1990 (now known as MUSIC21) which has become a central platform in Ireland for contemporary music for more than a decade. He is also a founder-member of the new music ensemble Vox21. He has appeared regularly on Irish national television and radio as a performer and commentator, and has written extensively on contemporary music for many journals including the Journal of Music in Ireland and the Musical Times. In 2006 he was elected 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. Dwyer was Artistic Director of a major retrospective of the life and works of György Ligeti which held in Dublin in November 2007. In December 2008, he released his latest CD - Twelve Etudes for solo guitar which was described by Fabio Zanon as 'the summation of an entire guitar epoch'. This year, Dwyer was nominated by the Royal Academy of Music (London) for the award of Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM). This prestigious honor is bestowed upon those former students deemed “to have made a significant contribution to the music profession.”
Web: http://www.benjamindwyer.com/biography_general.php (2010)