If Kingston has a supergroup, it’s folk trio Foster, Shea & Sudac. Though their story together starts in 2023, they bring together years of local music and community cred.

Since she was a child, Christina Foster has been dancing and singing. Over the years she’s released albums both solo and with her former band The Lady Racers, and sings with local bands like Rocket Surgery. She also works with Kingston Frontenac Music Together, which provides music programming for infants and young children.

Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist, and music teacher Savannah Shea has been a key voice in the music scene for years, releasing multiple albums and collaborations. She’s involved in plenty of local programming like Youth Open Mic and Kingston Pop Choir, and received a City of Kingston Mayor’s Arts Award in 2023.

And in addition to being a singer-songwriter herself, Anna Sudac is also a playwright and director and has worked with countless production companies, including Peerless Productions, a stage production organization that works with neurodiverse and other disabled artists. Anna also has the unique distinction of starring in Jay Middaugh’s 2017 film Live in Kingston, which played a key role in the formation of Kingston Live.

The trio has a concert at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts on March 13, and when I join our Zoom call to discuss the show, Savannah and Christina are already online, casually chatting before welcoming me. Moments later Anna joins, and within seconds the trio’s dynamic comes into focus. They’re easy-going, quick to laugh and to poke fun, but tender, like a group of old friends who all know each other’s histories.

One telling detail had to be omitted from this interview, but it’s one that’s important to reference to give context to the conversation. Very rarely did anyone speak over anyone else, and most thoughts were immediately followed by warm, considered words of affirmation from the listeners. The support and respect Christina, Savannah, and Anna have for each other comes through every beat of the conversation, and it’s that support and care that translates to the music they create together.

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You're all very individually active in town. What brought the three of you together to form Foster, Shea & Sudac?

Savannah: I feel as though I forced it upon them. I messaged them both and then it took like three years or something. I don't know. How long was it?

Anna: I do remember you chatting with us in the alleyway behind The Toucan one time. I remember Savannah, you were in a great mood and you were just gassing us up in the Toucan alleyway. And then that maybe laid the groundwork. We were like, okay, we will be fawned over *laughs*.

Savannah: I felt that I was like, please, like begging them. And I was like not cool enough to do it.

Anna: And then many years passed, little did she know, she was cool enough.

Christina: Anna was supporting [Savannah], opening a show for Rocket Surgery. And then the three of us did one song all together. That was like the first time.

It's funny going through and piecing the story together as best I could because there was the Live Wire Music Series show, and I think that was April 2023. But then there's this little gap. In that time, how did you all maintain that connection? How did you collaborate?

Anna: We kind of just organically start churning toward each other in the month or so leading up to [a performance].

Christina: And the gigs come pretty organically too, because we're all such Kingston folk. We know everybody around or get asked to do a show and then say, hey, why don't we do it as the trio? And then we have a push to practice, bring songs to each other, like ‘hey, I want to do this cover.’ ‘Let's work on this song.’ ‘I wrote a new song.’ All that kind of stuff comes up.

Anna: I personally feel that because from the time we started working together, Savannah has been very productive in terms of her output. Her work, her workflow, the songwriting, you know, veracity. I don't know if that's the right word, but I think really early on I was like, ‘okay, we have another show. I want to bring an original. I want to bring some original stuff and then pulling it from, maybe like a back corner of my life, like an old half-written thing or like a song I haven't done for a really long time.’ I felt very supported in doing so.

Obviously the three of you have some rapport. Like, you’re familiar with each other's music. Has there been anything in this collaboration that has surprised you about working together?

Savannah: We're all super big feelers. So it's a collaboration artistically, but then every time we meet, we're deepening our friendship and our trust of each other and how we work through challenging moments and how we create. I feel like it's a very holistic experience. There's a lot of bands I've been in where you just rehearse, and then you don't see anybody at any other time, and you go to the shows and you talk about your work or whatever. But this, I do feel like the two of you are some of my best friends.

Anna: I agree. We are your best friends *laughs*. That is something that does continue to surprise me still. The deepening… and the continual acceptance and honoring each other's vulnerability.

Christina: Yeah, I'm echoing parts of both of them. I was surprised how it's so artistic. It's not just musicianship like I've experienced in the past. It's much more like taking care of where we're coming from with each song, with each arrangement, with each other. And then it kind of allows us on stage to be silly. And I think we all really like that element, too. To do our music in a professional, beautiful way and then just, like, be stupid. And I mean that in a silly, great way.
 
Savannah: Yeah, I have never been worried about any of our shows. Like, I go on that stage and I'm like, there's nothing that could happen. Everyone here is so comfortable being on a stage that even if someone came up and pantsed all of us, we'd be like, ‘ha ha ha’, and put our pants back on and it would be fine. You know what I mean? *laughs*

Anna: Also that is not an invitation, by the way. If you're reading this right now and having ideas.

Savannah: That's why we all wear dresses.

Anna: I was just about to say that.

Savannah: But it just feels very safe, in a way. I trust myself more when I perform with you guys than I do when I perform on my own or with other people. 

How do you develop that? Like, do you feel that's just something that kind of comes from the blend of your personalities or is this something that you think you've been able to work at? 

Savannah: I think we've all done so much singing with other people in different contexts before. Like we're all very experienced harmonizers and group singers so that like separately we have a lot we're bringing to the table in that way. But then together, I think the blending and the deepening understanding of our personalities.

Christina: I think every time we get together, that deepens. I think the show that we did, that Baby Grand show that we did with Kay Kenney, where we were actually physically moving together as well as singing together and experimenting with all those different like media, table talk and acting and music, everything like that. I think we kind of skipped over a few years of what it would have been like if we had just been singing together as opposed to acting and dancing together too, because there's storytelling and then we also had someone like Kay supporting us. So that's unique. That was a really unique thing that we got to do.

Savannah: It’s a relationship, right? Like, there's been a moment in the relationship of the three of us, where we're all in a bit of discomfort. And then we've worked through that. Like, I think we've all been on the side of discomfort, worked through it, regained trust. So now I'm at the point where if the discomfort arises again, it feels possible to repair. It's not like a scary thing that we could possibly hurt each other's feelings. Like if we mess up, there's no hard feelings.

Anna:  It seems cheap to call them social skills, but interpersonal kind of navigation tools. I really have come to value a way of allowing the moment to continue to reset and go, okay, this now. And so if we all show up and the most present thing is someone's health or someone's mental health or whatever, we are all very aware of the thing that's most in need of attention, and we're never upset about it.

It seems to me that we always feel it's worthwhile to just give things attention that are asking for them. And then we make our way through the things, and then we get to the creative work. And when we land on the creative work, it's just the same. And so it kind of tends to gel really well. Fruitful, dense with meaning.

We don't often have to ask ‘what did I do there? What was my harmony there?’ Like, we do a bit of that, but usually your body just remembers. Because of the way we work. We were so present with it when we figured it out that coming back to our parts in a song feels just easy.

You've described a bit of the process of working together. What creative directions are you excited to explore together now? 

Savannah: This show, we're expanding arrangements a little bit just because we have access to a grand piano and more setup that we don't have to build our own sound for. So just excited to continue adding elements. And part of that is we're all building our own sense of confidence with the fact that we're in control of this. And that feels new to me. I won't speak for you, but there's things that I'm like, ‘but could I do that?’… we're allowed to do things that we're not perfect at right now, and we can still present them, and they can be good enough in a simple form, and they will get better over time.

I always have walked the line of, is it worth talking about gender in music? I wish we didn't have to, but I feel often that I'm representing my whole gender when I do something musically. And it's like, well, if I don't go up and, like, slay it on the guitar, then people are gonna be like, well, women can't play guitar, you know? And so I feel some pressure to be really good. But I'm trying to get more into that mind space of, my offering is good enough, and it's serving the music, and that's all that matters.

Christina:  Yeah. That's more punk rock than not doing it because you're afraid.

Anna: I played with a number of different groups, and I notice that my relationship to rehearsal has been pretty specific where I want to show up to a rehearsal and be perfect. And that's not necessarily a healthy thing, but where I have found security in showing up to rehearsal settings with a range of new people or people I don't see a lot. I'm actually pretty shy, and it can be a bit intimidating for me to just connect with people, especially musicians... Like, this town is full of incredibly supportive and vulnerable and beautiful musicians, and this group is a completely different feeling. That fear is just not there. It wouldn't keep me from following those instincts. So I'm excited to see, similarly to Savannah, how we will each individually expand ourselves in the group.

Foster, Shea & Sudac will be taking to the stage at the Isabel’s Recital Hall on March 13. Details and tickets here.

Posted: Mar 4, 2026 Originally Published: Mar 4, 2026