Dr. Randolph Foy is teaching professor of music and conductor of the orchestras of NC State (Raleigh Civic Symphony & Chamber Orchestra). He holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Iowa (organ/keyboards) and a doctorate (conducting) from Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. His teachers have included David Boe and Fenner Douglass (organ) and Frederick Prausnitz (conducting), and John Spitzer (musicology; dissertation “Textural Transformations: The Instrumental Music of Krzysztof Penderecki, 1960-73”).

Foy has conducted in the Baltimore/Washington area, and has taught at the University of Richmond, NC School of Science and Mathematics (founding faculty) and UNC School of the Arts. For 29 summers, Foy taught and conducted at the NC Governor's School in Winston-Salem, a summer program for gifted high school students. The recipient of several awards from the school, Exceptional Children, and the NCGS Alumni Association, in 2012 he worked to insure private and continuing public funding for the important program.

He has been called “an inspired and inspiring director” and “a totally committed musician whose mission is to spark in his audience the same level of enthusiasm that he clearly feels.” Dr. Foy has been instituted into the NC State’s Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension and Engagement and was awarded the City of Raleigh Medal of Arts for presenting a wide variety of concerts of unusual repertoire that enhance the cultural life of the community. Concerts have included Random Acts of Cage: Centennial Celebrations, African- American Heritage Celebrations, NC Connections, Music of Nature, China Dreams, Symphony Remix, Poetry Connections, Mozartiana, Hispanic Heritage, and Earth Matters. Courses include Twentieth-Century Music, Music of 19 th-Century Europe, and America’s Music: 40s, 50s, and 60s.