Jack Dwyer is a multi-instrumentalist (mandolin, acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, fiddle), vocalist, songwriter, and teacher based in Portland, OR.

Jack moved to the Portland area in late 2009, drawn by tales of the city’s thriving music scene. He teaches mandolin, banjo and bluegrass guitar on the adjunct music faculty of Lewis and Clark College. Jack is currently involved with a number of local bands and performs regularly around the Portland area, the Northwest, and Alaska.

Before he entered his teens Jack Dwyer was working professionally in various bands at venues in New York City and the Hudson River Valley, which proved an ideal location for him to study and occasionally perform with renowned bluegrass and jazz musicians. For a year and half he studied banjo and music theory with Bill Keith, pioneering member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys and early mentor to Bela Fleck. Around the same time he met NY-based jazz guitarist Mike DeMicco (Brubeck Brothers) and studied with him for two years.

Jack attended college at fourteen when he was offered a scholarship to study at Bard College, where he undertook the fundamentals of classical and jazz music theory and was exposed to many different forms of music making by international folk and avant-garde jazz artists alike.

Jack’s education continued, in the classroom and on the bandstand, as he attended college courses and performed regularly throughout his teens. In addition to his other projects, he led members of his family in The Dwyer Family Band, which performed over a thousand shows together across an eight-year period. Gradually, his academic focus shifted from music to English and film studies, and later to poetry and songwriting. In December ‘08 he earned a B.A. from the University of Washington’s Creative Writing program.