Christopher Foley is a pianist dedicated to the fields of pedagogy, opera, contemporary music, art song, and chamber music. At the Eastman School of Music, he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1994, majoring in Piano Accompanying and Chamber Music as a student of Jean Barr and David Burge. He is on the faculty of the Royal Conservatory of Music and serves as Senior Examiner for the RCM’s Certificate Program. He spent fourteen summers as Resident Accompanist at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, Maine. In 1989 at the Eckhardt-Grammaté Competition for the Performance of Contemporary Music, he won first prize for the performance of the commissioned work and third prize overall. In 1991, he won first prize in piano at the Kneisel Competition for the Performance of German Lieder in Rochester, New York.

Dr. Foley is highly active as a clinician, with recent webinar appearances at The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy, The Aspen Music Festival, Collabfest, Tom Lee Music Canada, Trinity Western University, and Millionaire Musician. As author of the Collaborative Piano Blog, he writes about issues of importance to the collaborative pianist, as well as current musical events in Toronto and elsewhere. Recent projects include Foley Music and Arts, a blog about productive creativity in the arts, as well as The Suleika Project, an art song initiative with Edmonton-based mezzo soprano Alia Amad.

As pianist and repetiteur for Tapestry New Opera, he has been involved with numerous productions, as well as being on the creative team for Tapestry’s unique Composer/Librettist and Director/Musical Director laboratories. In 2010 he was the first Leadership Legacy Intern at Tapestry, where he created the Tapestry Songbook program, a workshop and recital program aimed at educating emerging singers and pianists in the new opera development process. Some of the many venues at which he has recently performed include the Eastman School of Music Faculty Concert Series, the University of Western Ontario, Cleveland State Composers’ Forum, Vancouver International New Music Festival, April in Santa Cruz, Sonic Boom, Toronto Arts Week, Word on the Street, Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop, Toronto Dance Theatre, Algoma Fall Festival, and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music.