Juno award-winning master musician and composer Phil Dwyer has battled with addiction and mental illness
Phil Dwyer’s 2012 Juno award for the incredibly ambitious Changing Seasons is the latest in a “resume full of examples of his genuinely adventurous creative spirit,” says the Juno website. Changing Seasons was awarded “Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year.”
The Changing Seasons suite marks a new stage in Phil Dwyer‘s development as an artist, writes Nou Dadoun at VancouverJazz.com. The theme running through the composition is change, described by Phil as: “Changing weather, changing climatic conditions, the changing economic structure of the world and some big changes in my own life. It’s a call to acknowledge the fact of all these changes taking place and a query as to what are we going to do about it.”
Prior to the Juno Awards event, Phil Dwyer spoke to Peter Hum at the Ottawa Citizen about his life and his work. Phil said that from 1983 until 2008, drug and alcohol use constantly threatened his health, family and career—even if it seemed to casual observers that he was flourishing. He was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2001. Dwyer told the interviewer that the years since that time “have been a more or less constant attempt to wrestle this illness to the ground, using different combinations of medication, self-education and lots of therapy.”
We’re joined in the studio by Phil Dwyer.
