Ian Foster
Sound
Biography
Ian Foster, native of Newfoundland, Canada, is a storyteller. That music and film are the ways he tells those stories only makes the telling richer still. Once described by CBC's Bob Mersereau as being "a fine example of what a 21st century folk performer should be doing," Foster continues to evolve and defy genre, as his latest forthcoming album and film project Close to the Bone: The Film (2023) illustrates. Ian has been compared to diverse artists like Bruce Cockburn, Daniel Lanois, The War on Drugs, Josh Ritter and more, depending on the album of his that you're listening to. Meanwhile, his film scores draw more on Sigur Ros and Olafur Arnalds textures and ambience. This is not a bug, it's a feature: it all comes from a love of sonic exploration that has only grown as Ian's career has moved between touring around the world and producing albums for a diverse set of artists. Ian has toured in Canada, the U.S, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, and Italy, and has had his music played on radio internationally. He is a MusicNL and ECMA (East Coast Music Award) winner, a finalist for the International Songwriting Competition, and has numerous co-writes to his credit, including the legendary folk songwriter Ron Hynes. Ian performs and records both solo, and as a duo with his longtime partner Nancy Hynes, with whom he released the multi-award winning album A Week in December in 2018.
Known For
After Raam, an international student, moves to Newfoundland to pursue his dreams and education, his housemate Joseph loses his job amidst the global pandemic. As they set out on a whale watching trip together, tragedy strikes leaving Raam questioning everything he knows.
Ballad of North Whale
It's 1986, Shannon Crane means to be bound for a future she cannot know, on a day filled with possibility and hope. In her 7th grade class, Shannon has to reckon with the ordinary calamity of being herself after a simultaneous incident of being bullied, is caught between the extraordinary catastrophic event of the space challenger disaster, leaving a debris of searching, questioning.
73 Seconds
The film accompanying the album "Closer to the Bone" by Ian Foster.
Close to the Bone: The Film
Ginok Song, a South Korean artist living and painting in a small fishing village in Newfoundland, explores what home is, who she was, and where she is now. Ginok examines the choice to become an artist as a need to explore self-expression, an intimate journey to know herself through the female gaze.
The Gaze
When Jack begins to forget, he visits Keystone, an organization with an unlikely mandate: making your most important memories truly unforgettable.
Keystone
In the coldest waters surrounding Newfoundland's rugged Fogo Island, "people of the fish"—traditional fishers—catch cod live by hand, one at a time, by hook and line. After a 20-year moratorium on North Atlantic cod, the stocks are returning. These fishers are leading a revolution in sustainability, taking their premium product directly to the commercial market for the first time. Travel with them from the early morning hours, spend time on the ocean, and witness the intricacies of a 500-year-old tradition that's making a comeback.
HAND. LINE. COD.
Seduced by a mysterious woman at a wake, Mark must decide if he will remain faithful to his overbearing girlfriend, or give in to temptation.
The Wake
On the shores of a small fishing village lives a lonely settlement of men - capturing and domesticating otherworldly creatures that were never meant to be tamed.
Bedlamer
When Grandpa has to watch over his four year old granddaughter, Emily, he realizes despite being very opposite, they share a lot of the same struggles and dependency in a fast paced evolving world.
Watching Emily
It was a pretty big story that Jeff Elliot had come back from the dead. Jeff wasn't really a big deal prior to his death. He was a musician from St. John's, Newfoundland. His music drifted out of half broken PAs and into restless drunken crowds for years. But that all changed after he died. Suddenly, fame happened. People who had not seen him in life yearned for him after death. They yearned for the last show. And this one time, they got what they wanted.
One More Song
A grown man and a young girl compare sibling rivalries in a playground one snowy afternoon.