About Peter

PETER FOLEY (1967-2021) was an award-winning composer, lyricist, arranger, orchestrator, and music director. His musical theater works include The Hidden Sky (Book by Kate Chisholm, based on a short story by acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin; nominated for six Philadelphia Barrymore Awards), The Names We Gave Him (Book & Lyrics by Ellen McLaughlin; commissioned by the Public Theater, Richard Rodgers Award finalist), I Capture the Castle (commissioned by Signature Theatre), Bloom, Whitechapel, and The Bear, a short operetta. His collaborators include Marion Adler, Carl R. Brush, Mark Campbell, Kate Chisholm, Adam Gopnik, Matthew Heimer, Kevin Mayes, Ellen McLaughlin, Cara Reichel, Andy Siegel, and Kenneth Vega.

For his music and lyrics to The Hidden Sky, which premiered at Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater, he received a NEA New American Works grant, the Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Stephen Sondheim Award from the American Music Theater Festival, Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, a Spirit Award for Outstanding New Score, and a Barrymore nomination for Outstanding Original Music.

Peter’s other stage works include music for “To Sing” in Mark Campbell’s Songs from an Unmade Bed (New York Theatre Workshop, original cast album on Sh-K-Boom Records) and scores for several plays, including Newton’s Universe (St. Ann’s Warehouse), Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey), and Alice in Wonderland (Berkeley Theater Project).

Peter’s songs have been performed at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook, Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, the New York Festival of Song, Symphony Space, Town Hall, Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, Birdland, and more by some of Broadway’s best, including Kate Baldwin, Judy Blazer, Merle Dandridge, Jason Gotay, Brian d’Arcy James, Melissa Errico, Manoel Felciano, Rebecca Luker, Sally Wilfert, Michael Winther, and BD Wong.

Peter also composed scores and themes for numerous television shows and documentaries, including Listening to America with Bill Moyers and seven seasons of the Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award-winning PBS series, Art:21.

An accomplished pianist and expert in music notation, he served as musical director/keyboardist for the premieres of Rinde Eckert’s Highway Ulysses (American Repertory Theater), Kenneth Vega’s Heartfield (Baltimore Theater Project), and concert performances with Manoel Felciano. He was the music assistant for the Broadway production of Sting’s The Last Ship, associate music director for the developmental workshop of Elvis Costello’s A Face in the Crowd, and music preparation supervisor for the Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical The Band’s Visit.

Peter was a fellow/resident artist at the MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Music Theater Conference, and Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross. He was an alum of the BMI Lehman Engle Musical Theatre Workshop, New Dramatists’ Composer-Librettist Studio, and American Lyric Theater Composer Librettist Development Program.

A native of Berkeley, California, Peter graduated with honors from Yale University, and lived outside New York City with his wife, writer/director Kate Chisholm, and their daughter Grace. He passed away in August 2021 following a 10-year struggle with ocular melanoma, a rare cancer.

Read Adam Gopnik’s profile of Peter published in The New Yorker, “A Gifted Composer Gone Too Soon.”