The Wintering Project

When we listen to a piece of music, how does it move us? What does it make us think about? How do we interact with it?

Everyone – consciously or unconsciously – asks and answers these questions. With “Wintering,” I wanted a number of musicians in the Newfoundland music community to listen and answer that question with their own music. The result is a very special album called “The Wintering Project,” featuring nine iterations of my original 90 second solo piano piece. The album starts with that composition, and flows through versions that bring out specific parts of the melody, reflect its mood through movement, and even transform the music into something nearly unrecognizable from its original form.

For me, every message I received from a fellow artist with a finished track attached was a gift to open and listen to, allowing me to hear my own writing in a different way. It brought a little warmth to the cold season, and I hope you’ll enjoy spending time with this collection of unique musical voices.

— Ian Foster

Meet the Artists

Nick Coultas-Clarke (NCC)

Nick Coultas-Clarke (NCC) is a musician and percussionist hailing from St. John’s, NL. Since 2009, he has worked alongside some of the top musical artists in Canada both as a member, and side and studio musician, producer, engineer and drum technician. In 2022, Nick released a solo album under the name NCC utilizing a hybrid of electric and acoustic drums for live and improvisational performance.

I wanted to take Wintering and filter it through my NCC creative process. I started by sampling the song into 4 bar segments which created 21, 4 second samples. 

From there I ran a combination of LFO’s and step sequencers with different variables on each sample. Each time the drum is played, it would play a random 0.5 second portion of each sample based on these variables. When they were all set up, I then improvised the performance in a single take based on how my choices interacted with samples.

Photographer: Marie-Rachel Dionne

Andrya Duff

Andrya Duff is a multi-disciplinary performer and creator who brings this blended approach to each project, some highlights include, The Baroness Von Sketch Show (Choreographer/Dancer), Fictional Dance Party (Geoffrey Pugen), Several Interventions Over the Course of Two Hours (Ryan McNamara for Harbourfront Centre), The Children’s Crusade (Luminato), Tricycle (Circus Orange), The Stronger Variations (Theatre Rusticle), The Proust Project (Canstage), Eli and The Death Curse (Untellable Movement Theatre), Bad New Days (Summerworks), Peaches (InsideOut Film Festival), The Heart Play (Pike Productions), and The Fire Kedgys’ Howl (Neighbourhood Dance Works presented by the National Arts Centre).

It sounded like missing. So I removed the song. Using music that varied from Wintering instead. I sent the videos to Ian. This is the result.

Brendan Fitzpatrick & Heidi Burns

Brendan Fitzpatrick is a musician and educator from St. John’s, NL.
With a background studying jazz at St. Francis Xavier University, he has performed across Atlantic Canada, blending genres from jazz to folk and rock. Since moving home, Brendan has been busy establishing himself as an in-demand musician, both on stage and in the studio.

Heidi Burns is a drummer and educator from Antigonish, NS. Throughout her career, she has spent time performing and collaborating with artists across Atlantic Canada. In 2024, she completed her undergraduate degree in jazz studies at St. Francis Xavier University and has since moved to St. John’s, NL where she has been working with various local artists both live and in the studio.

Longing

As a whole, Wintering evoked a sense of longing reminiscence to a simpler time. The melody reverberates in the air, lingering, as the progression prods on before finally bringing us home, as if to say all will resolve itself. 

Heidi opens the piece, expressing these emotions across the drumset. This lays the foundation for Brendan’s lush adaptation of the progression. 

As the piece unfolds, guitar and drums interact spontaneously, continuously building intensity and depth while the bass keeps the improvisation grounded. With a reference to the original piece, the performance reaches its peak and returns to the initial theme, closing with that same sense of hopeful resolution.

Kristan Toczko

Kristan Toczko (@HarpistKT) is a virtuoso Canadian harpist and one of the most widely seen and heard classical musicians in the world. 

She has become a viral social media musician gaining over 4 million followers across social media, with her performances reaching hundreds of millions worldwide. 

Her debut album, Rock Echoes (2024), received widespread acclaim, remaining on the Billboard Classical Crossover charts for two consecutive weeks. 

She holds degrees from McGill and Yale Universities and has won major competitions in Canada and abroad, performing in acclaimed venues including Carnegie Hall. 

Kristan appeared as a soloist at multiple music festivals and has worked with world-renowned orchestras. She is also a Signature Artist at Musicnotes, where she publishes her harp arrangements. 

Kristan plays a Lyon & Healy 85CG pedal harp and a Salvi Delta C electric lever harp, and currently resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

This piece was recorded on electric harp using the Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer, a multi‑effects pedal designed to reshape and reimagine the original signal in real time. The Qi blends chorus, delay, granular processing, and reverb, allowing individual notes and gestures to be stretched, scattered, and reflected back in evolving textures.

For this piece, I used the pedal to build an atmospheric, layered sound world around the original tune, letting the instrument’s natural resonance interact with the pedal’s shifting echoes and fragmented repeats. The result is a blend of clean harp tone and electronically‑generated trails that add motion, colour, and depth to the original work.

Claire Boudreau

Claire Boudreau (@claire_boudro) is an Acadian-Korean violinist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Since 2024, she has been playing First Violin as a regular sublist with the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. 

Outside of music, she is most well known as a content creator. With her videos reaching up to 10,6 million views on TikTok and Instagram, her work has been featured on Radio-Canada Première (Le Réveil/Nouvelle-Écosse et T.- N.). 

She is currently finishing her 3rd undergraduate year in Performance concentration at MUN’s School of Music under the tutelage of Nancy Dahn. She is the recipient of the Nova Scotia Talent Trust Judith A. Grant Bursary.

Winter has always felt like a introverted season to me. Nature goes into hibernation, people stay in… it is as if the sound of life freezes. I find it easier to listen to my own thoughts in the tranquility of winter. I wanted the the piece to sound like the inner dialogue I experience in this season. I really liked how grounded and steady the piano part was, so I wanted my violin part to act as the mirroring voice. Sometimes, you can hear the violin’s voice bounce off the piano. Other times, the voice converges. I am honoured to have participated in this project, and I hope that you enjoyed what we created in the studio!

Ethan Gough

Ethan Gough is a Canadian bassist, composer, and producer based in St. John’s, Newfoundland. 

A Grade 11 student at Gonzaga High School, he is dedicated to creating original contemporary art music that explores themes of climate change, nature, mental health, and human connection. His dynamic style blends popular, electronic, jazz, and contemporary classical influences, often incorporating surreal elements such as electronics, projections, or narration to enhance world-building in his works. 

Ethan has received 2024 and 2025 Government of NL Arts and Letters Awards. He studies composition with Jack Etchegary and his music has been performed across Canada. 

An avid performer, Ethan plays bass with multiple ensembles and studies bass with Jim Vivian. He is active in youth music mentorship and community arts programs.

I started by running Ian’s track through this plugin called “Tape Fiasco” as well as some other degradation plugins and messed with it until I got something I was really vibing with. Then I added some of my own guitar to give the track some more ambience, as well as synths and strings. Then I added in some heavy sidechained drums, and since the original melody got mostly lost due to the effects on Ian’s original track I re-recorded it in with some plucky synths and a violin. Lastly, I put in a filtered reese bass to add some low end.

Shana Brown

Hailing from Newfoundland, Canada and steeped in traditional Newfoundland/Irish music Shana is a songwriter, composer, piano adventurer and a bona fide accordion shredder. As her first love, she’s taken her accordion in directions not typically heard around Trinity Bay, working swing and classical pieces into her extensive trad repertoire.

Still exploring how to use the instrument to its fullest potential, she has begun to incorporate it into her songwriting and piano adventure as she continues to create original music in the singer/songwriter/folk genre. With a strong sense of melody, an emerging flair for arrangement and a voice that is deceptively vulnerable but comes across with musical weight and purpose, Shana is a natural musician just coming into her own.

When I sit down to write, I usually have a concept in mind; something that has been floating around in my head for a few days, a melody or lyrics that were inspired by an experience of mine. In this case, having been given a piano piece to work around, I listened to the track multiple times and gave it time to sink in. With that, came the idea of the ambient, mystical intro. Moving forward, I had the idea to build in a change in tempo and style, matching the type of music I typically write which is very much inspired by trad NL/ Irish music while exploring cool layering, melodies and instrumentation.

Mahina Graham-Laidlaw

Mahina Graham-Laidlaw (she/they), is a musician and researcher living in St. John’s, NL. In 2021 she completed a Bachelor of Music and in 2024 a Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology both at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Her master’s research studied St. John’s freelance musicians and their relationship to the community and its history. 

Mahina has been working as an arts administrator in various roles for different arts organizations around the province, notably The Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Arts Society, the Sound Arts Initiative, St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, and more recently, The Music Industry Association of Newfoundland & Labrador. 

She is an active contributor to her community as a board member of the Local 820, Canadian Federation of Musicians union since 2024. In her spare time Mahina teaches at Shine Music Studio, an inclusive student-led learning studio. 

Her work is a testament to her relentless love for the arts and her unyielding desire to make a meaningful difference in her community. Outside of her work, Mahina enjoys hiking, cooking, or playing trivia at her favourite local pub.

Mahina GL and Snow clearing

Active wintering was happening all around me. I created this track in isolation, in sickness, and after another record snowfall for the island. 

I was stuck in my tiny apartment watching the winter world go by from my front window. The city had shut down, all activity ceased. 

Yet once every couple hours there would be an intense burst of beeps, scrapes, and whirrs that took over. The all encompassing sounds of machines. The snow banks piled up, littered, mashed, dirtied. 

I wanted to pair such a lovely melody with the clanks of winter reality.

Album Release + Listening Party

Join the NÄRA Community for a musical experience, with special guests Amy Collyer-Holmes, Nancy Hynes, Kira Sheppard, and Heidi Wicks. 

November 9, 7pm

Get Your tickets!