If you believe composers live in ivory towers, try thinking of Benjamin Dwyer. This thirtysomething, one-time roofer took first to the guitar. Peaking in London with a Master's in performance, and feeling engulfed by what he calls stagnation, when the world didn't crowd to his door on his return to Dublin, he embarked on composition, "to fill the vacuum". And, before he seems to have known fully what he was taking on, he was doing a doctorate in composition at Queen's University, Belfast, and running what has become the Bank of Ireland Mostly Modern concert series in Dublin.
He was, he says, a bit surprised to be taken on by Queen's. He had only about seven scores to his name. "But they accepted me, and I was offered a scholarship. I was very quickly presented with a take-it-or-leave-it situation. A bit karmic, in a way, something was pointing in a particular direction." It must have been the right one, he seems to feel, as not only did he get more involved in composition, but got more gigs as a performer. And Queen's has proved quite provocative, fruitfully stretching him in unexpected compositional directions.
He still likes the idea of being a composer/performer. "It kind of harks back to the last century. I do think it gives you very particular advantages being a performer. There is a connection between interpreting music and creating it."
And he quite enjoys the impresario-like involvement in putting on concerts. It's educational, he says, and, anyway, it's just "the business end of music".
The concert of his work at the John Field Room on Tuesday (see Classical listings) includes early pieces - simpler, sometimes rock-influenced music - and later, more complex works. He's quick to qualify that to "comparatively more complex" and seems anxious to stress that he doesn't like intellectualism in music.
The programme is made up of chamber and solo pieces, reflecting the practicality of outlook which has seen him generally writing for the performers he knows to be available to him. But he has written larger pieces. There's a work for chamber orchestra, choir and soloist which he's trying to get recorded.
The Instituto Cervantes has commissioned a Guitar Concerto for the centenary of Lorca, to be premiered by the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and there's the possibility of a percussion concerto in the offing. The small-scale of most his existing output, he stresses, doesn't mean he's at all afraid to tackle the big canvas. Watch this space.
