News & Dates
NEWS
New FUNI album
GÁRUR
(RIPPLES)
Release date 3rd June 2026
From summer 2025 to spring 2026, a good deal of my musical activities have been focused on producing and recording the third full length FUNI duo album with Bára Grímsdóttir. It's a complex and ambitious project, and it's total gestation period would make an elephant wince.
All sorts of events, for example Covid along with other work commitments have conspired to delay us, but now it is finally recorded and mastered, and a beautiful digisleeve package and 20 page booklet in Icelandic and English has been designed, and it's now away being made into CDs in Poland.
The release date 3rd June, would have been Bára's father, Grímur Lárusson's 100th birthday, which is a particularly fitting launch date as one of the song texts on the album is by him.
We have cast our net wide and collected together nine songs and rímur extracts. Some are hundreds of years old, while others have been written in the 21st century. They are all part of the ongoing river of traditional song. Bára has written new tunes for some of the texts, and we have made instrumental arrangements featuring Icelandic langspil, kantele, shruti, pibgorn and Íslensk fiðla.
This process of discovering and then arranging hidden riches is one of the things that we love about working with traditional music, whether it's from Iceland or England.
We have also added a new dimension to our work on Gárur. We spent many hours working with our friend Buzby Birchall of Hidden Sounds, travelling to locations connected with the songs and making special recordings in the Icelandic landscape. Then we worked with sound engineer Konstantine Vlassis to weave sound design elements throughout the album, so the sound world of the earth and sea that these songs first sprung from is present, like veins of minerals through rock.
Gárur will be available worldwide as physical CDs and also as high quality download from our Bandcamp page.
Nordic Harp Meeting
Nordic Harp Meeting (NHM) is an annual gathering of musicians, instrument makers, musicologists and enthusiasts. Known to its regular attendees as the Nerdic Harp Meeting. The meeting brings together skilled and expert performers, teachers and researchers, who are all involved in making music with a big variety of old stringed instruments, such as lyres, kantele, hummel, langspil, langeleik, jouhikko and of course more varieties of harp than you can shake a stick at. We also often have non stringed instruments.
The meeting is hosted in a different country each year and having already visited Estonia twice, in 2025 it further breached its Nordic geographical borders to include the Netherlands.
NHM is an extremely useful and inspiring annual meeting for Bára and I. Living in Iceland, we are very isolated from the range of skills and expertise that we are able to access at NHM. To be able to meet with all these people under one roof is a great privilege. Since our first meeting in 2010 we have tried to go as often as possible and we have made many firm friends who also attend as often as possible. It was at our first NHM in 2010 that we met Kate Fletcher and Corwen Broch, who plays on our new FUNI album.
As usual it was good to spend quality time making music with old NHM friends and colleagues and also to make new friends. Among the many highlights for me in 2024 was hearing our friend Marit Steinsrud and her sister with two of their friends (also sisters) playing langeleik together, as they have done ever since they were teenagers.
In 2026 Marit will be one of the co-hosts of the meeting when we will be at the Ringve Musikkmuseum in Trondheim, Norway.
Funi in action at Nordic Harp Meeting in the Estonian Traditional Folk Music Centre, Viljandi, Estonia
Leon Rosselson at 90 not out
In my view Leon is one of the greatest songwriters in the English language over the past 60+ years. I have admired his work and performed many of his songs throughout my singing life, so it was a special honour to be invited to be part of a concert in July 2024, it celebrating Leon's 90th year. I performed 'Wo sind die elefanten', the source of his memoire title, 'Where are the elephants.
PERFORMANCE DATES 2026
Friday 6th February
kl. 19.00 - 22.00
Safnanótt
National Museum of Iceland (Þjóðminjasafnið)
Annual free, open house event
Wednesday 18th February
Wednesday 18th March
Wednesday 15th April
kl. 20.00 - 21.30
Söngvaka
Icelandic traditional song workshops
for Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn
at
Söngskólinn í Reykjavík
49 Laufásvegur, 101 Reykjavík
Aðgangur ókeypis / Free admission
Friday 24th - Sunday 26th April
Stemma landsmót
Raufarhöfn, northeast Iceland
Annual national gathering of Icelandic Kvæðamenn organisations.
Concerts, Dancing, Workshops, Sessions etc.
FUNI gig with Bára Grímsdóttir
Presenting Kveðskapur workshop
'Stemmur, vísur og kvæðafólk frá Norðausturlandi'
Wednesday 3rd June
New FUNI album release date
GÁRUR
(Ripples)
Wed. 1st - Sun. 5th July
Þjóðlagahátíðin á Siglufirði
(Siglufjörður Folk Festival)
Concert
featuring the new Funi album 'Gárur'
Plus workshops.
Sun. 13th - Sat 19th Sept.
Vaka þjóðlistahátíð
(Vaka Folk Arts Festival)
Concerts, workshops, sessions, seminar, talks...
Full programme to be confirmed.
Weds. 15th October at 20.00
Söngvaka
Söngskólinn í Reykjavík
Monthly Icelandic traditional song workshops resume for the winter
Aðgangur ókepis, allir velkomin
Fri. 16th - Sun. 18th October
Nordic Harp Meeting
Trondheim, Norway,
FUNI gig with Bára Grímsdóttir
Leading workshops about Icelandic folk music and performing in a public concert.
Sat. 12th - Wed. 12th November
Pécs, Hungary
Concerts plus presentation about lesser Internationally known English songwriters in the English folk scene.
Sat. 21st - Sun. 29th November
England solo tour
Sat 21st Lewes
Sun 22nd Guitar workshop, Lewes
Tues. 24th Cecil Sharp House, London
Thurs. 26th Welly Folk Club, Billingham, Co. Durham
Fri. 27th t.b.c.
Sat. 28th Lancaster
Sun. 29th South Shields
Booking now for 2026 and beyond
I am always interested to hear from people with ideas for projects and performances.
I have a lot of experience as a performer and workshop leader, so I can offer all sorts of performance and workshop possibilities:
• Full length concerts and folk club guest spots.
• Shared, themed & song swap sessions, including with singers from other traditions.
• Workshops and talks on narrative song styles from the British and Icelandic traditions - ballads, rímur & vikivaki.
• Workshops on arranging songs for different levels of skill and experience.
• Instrumental workshops on guitar and Icelandic langspil.
To enquire about booking
Chris Foster either solo
or the duo
Funi with Bára Grímsdóttir
just send an email to:
chrisfoster.iceland(at)gmail.com
Where are the elephants?
2023 saw the publication of Leon Rosselson's long awaited memoir. It's a fascinating read, and I highly recommend getting a copy.
You can buy it online from the publishers PM Press here:
BBC Folk Awards nomination 2018
The track 'The life of a man / Greensleeves'
on my 2017 album Hadelin, was nominated as
Best Traditional Track in the 2018 BBC Folk Awards.
You can listen to it right here.
Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn
Autumn to spring sees the return of the monthly Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn meetings and Söngvaka, which I help to run.
Söngvaka is an open singing session that is held at Söngskólinn í Reykjavík, in downtown Reykjavík. The idea behind the session is to create a welcoming space and opportunity for people to come and sing together and learn songs from the Icelandic oral / aural tradition together. In particular, we have focused on the unique Icelandic, two voice harmony songs called tvísöngvar and the sagnadans ballad songs.
Songs are taught 'by ear' and we also have music notation available for people who find it helpful.
Full details Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn and Söngvaka meetings, along with extensive archive recordings, can be found on the Iðunn website at:
Going global,
flowing with the stream
My two vinyl albums for Topic Records (Layers -1977 and All Things in Common - 1979) have been on Spotify for some time, since Topic Records digitised their back catalogue.
My CD albums - Traces - 1999, Jewels - 2004, Outsiders - 2008 and Hadelin - 2017; are also available on multiple streaming platforms as well as the two albums that I have made under the Funi duo name with Bára Grímsdóttir (Funi - 2004 and Flúr - 2013) are also out there.
I doubt that the combined income from all this will run to a Mars bar, but you never know, somebody in South America or Russia might discover the delights of hearing Lord Bateman, The Seeds of Love or some traditional Icelandic songs.