He also studied music at Trinity College Dublin, and in 2000 he received a PhD in composition from Queen's University Belfast.
Dwyer spent the years 2002 to 2007 in Spain (Andalusia and Barcelona), before returning to Ireland, where he has taught guitar at the Royal Irish Academy of Music since 2009.
He was awarded the Villa-Lobos Centenary Medal by the Brazilian Government in 1987, elected to Aosdána in 2006, and made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, in 2009.
Among Irish composers, Benjamin Dwyer has made one of the largest and most sustained contributions to the repertoire of classical guitar.
[2] Often in his music, conflicting ideas result not in resolution but in mutual annihilation, a process seen clearly in his Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (2000), which illustrates the universal forces of creation (Rajas), preservation (Sattva) and destruction (Tamas) described in the Indian Vedic traditions.