Chapelizod Community Festi<meta name="description" content="Chapelizod Community Festival 2008 29 June to 6 July 2008 The Festival will cover a wide range of events aimed at all the inhabitants of Chapelizod from the youngest to the eldest. It will be a unique event combining the spirit of the village with a new artistic programme that includes contemporary artists and their works. The programme will be open to a multi-cultural audience and will also present their rich cultural potential to a wider audience."> val 2008

Chapelizod Community Festival 2008
29 June - 6 July 2008

Ben Dwyer

Date:- 28 June 2008
Venue:- St Laurence Church
Time:- 9 p.m.
Tickets:- €15

Ben Dwyer and Christine Dwyer-Hickey

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 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 his 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 & 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. His extended monograph on the life and works of Irish composer John Buckley (published by Field Day Press and Notre Dame University Press) will be released in 2007. 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 will be Artistic Director of a major retrospective of the life and works of György Ligeti to be held in Dublin in November 2007.

Website: www.benjamindwyer.com

email: info@chapelizodfestival.com

Chapelizod Community Festival 2008 29 June - 6 July 2008

Ben Dwyer

Chapelizod Community Festival 2008
29 June - 6 July 2008