Randolyn Emerson, violin, begins her ninth year with the Fayetteville Symphony (completing her first season under the conductorship of Harlan Duenow). Born into a rich and varied musical environment – her mother was a member of the world-famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir – Randolyn was singing for audiences by age two. After finding her mother’s old instrument in a closet, however, eight-year-old Randolyn fell in love with the violin.
Randolyn graduated summa cum laude from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music degree, having studied violin with Oscar Chausow, longtime Utah Symphony concertmaster, and voice with Betty Jean Chipman. Her university experience included a six-week European tour with the university’s A Capella Choir, where she soloed both as a solo violinist and a solo vocalist with the choir in historical venues such as Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, the organ loft (above the grave of composer Anton Bruckner) of St. Florian Cathedral in Linz, Austria, and Venice, Italy’s polyphonic St. Mark’s Basilica. By means of a generous scholarship, she also received excellent orchestral training at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA, under the tutelage of Maestro Maurice Abravanel, Artistic Director of the Utah Symphony for more than thirty years.
Relocating to North Carolina in 1988, Randolyn became active in many area orchestras, including the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, Greensboro Symphony, North Carolina Theatre pit orchestra (25 years and counting), Tar River Orchestra, and the Raleigh and Durham Symphonies, wherein she served as each orchestra’s assistant concertmaster (and where she met her viola-playing husband, Paul). For ten years, Randolyn was also privileged to be an extra violinist with the North Carolina Symphony. Operas, ballets, choral oratorios, traveling Broadway shows, recordings of Robert Ward compositions, and even concerts with modern artists such as Rod Stewart, Regis Philbin, Bobby McFerrin and Clay Aiken – over the years, Randolyn’s played for them all. She’s even made forays into fiddling, recording a CD with the bluegrass band Sweet Potato Pie and serving as a last-minute concert substitute with Lorica, the Celtic ensemble formed by WRAL-TV’s Bill Leslie.
Aside from music, Randolyn has put to good use her Master of Business Administration degree from Meredith College in Raleigh, NC, by establishingherself as a professional family history researcher and writer. Her greatest joys, though, are always found in her faith and in her family: sons Erik and Daniel and her always-supportive husband, Paul.
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