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The profile · researched 22 October 2026
Forty years of other people's hits, and a barge in his home harbour
David Foster spent four decades making other singers sound inevitable from behind a mixing desk. At 76 he plays the piano bench himself on a North American theatre circuit with his wife, Katharine McPhee — and in August 2026 he closed his transplant foundation's fortieth year with a floating stage in Victoria's Inner Harbour.
Victoria, and the long apprenticeship
Foster was born on 1 November 1949 in Victoria, British Columbia, and showed perfect pitch at the age of three. He trained in both classical and jazz music as a child, which is an unusual grounding for someone whose eventual signature was the big-chorus pop ballad. By 1966 he was playing with The Strangers, and in 1971 he joined Skylark as keyboardist. That band's "Wildflower" reached the top ten in 1973 — his first taste of a record that moved on its own, without him pushing it.
Skylark did not last, and Foster did what capable keyboard players did in mid-1970s Los Angeles: he took session work and formed bands that functioned as calling cards. Attitudes came in 1975, Airplay in 1979. Neither made him famous. What they did was put him in rooms with engineers, arrangers and the sort of musicians who got hired repeatedly, and that network is what carried him across the glass from player to producer.
The crossing point was Earth, Wind & Fire's I Am in 1979. From there the pattern of his career is visible: find an act with an audience and no current hit, write the song that reintroduces them, and arrange it so the chorus arrives like a door opening.
The catalogue that pays for everything else
Chicago's early-1980s comeback is the clearest demonstration of that method. The band had been written off; Foster rebuilt them around ballads, and "You're the Inspiration" became one of the songs audiences still expect to hear him play. Natalie Cole's Unforgettable... with Love followed in 1991, an album that made a posthumous duet with Nat King Cole into a mainstream commercial event rather than a novelty.
Then came The Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992 with Whitney Houston, which remains the best-selling soundtrack album ever released. That record is the reason Foster can fill a 2,000-seat theatre without a current single: a substantial share of the room arrived through music he made for someone else, and knows it.
He has won 16 Grammy Awards from 45 nominations across four decades, his most recent in 2009 for Michael Bublé's Crazy Love. He has three Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe. He also worked the industry's executive side, serving as a senior vice president at Warner Music Group from 1997 and chairing Verve Records from 2012 to 2016. Canada has decorated him thoroughly: the Order of British Columbia in 1995, the Order of Canada in 1998 and promotion to Officer in 2006, induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, plus a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.
Broadway, on his own name
The most recent large thing Foster built from nothing was a stage score. Boop! The Musical, based on the Betty Boop cartoons, has music by Foster, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and a book by Bob Martin. It opened out of town first: previews at Chicago's CIBC Theatre from 19 November 2023, an official opening on 6 December and a close on 24 December, with Jasmine Amy Rogers in the title role and Jerry Mitchell directing and choreographing.
The Broadway transfer began previews at the Broadhurst Theatre on 11 March 2025 and opened on 5 April 2025. It closed on 13 July 2025 after 25 previews and 112 regular performances. Reviews ran mixed to positive; critics generally praised Rogers and the production design while questioning why the show existed, with Jesse Green in The New York Times filing it as a "why?" musical that read more as brand extension than as a piece with something to say.
The awards split along the same line. Boop! took three Tony nominations — Rogers for lead actress, Gregg Barnes for costume design and Mitchell for choreography — and Foster's score was not among them. The Drama Desks were kinder to the writing: 11 nominations, the most of any production that season, three wins, and a nomination for Foster's music. He has said he is at work on further stage projects.
August 2026: the fortieth year, and a stage that floated
Foster founded the David Foster Foundation in Victoria in 1986. It covers the non-medical costs — travel, accommodation, lost income — carried by Canadian families whose children need major organ transplants, and campaigns on organ donation. Its fortieth anniversary was marked over a weekend in his home town, and it produced the largest-scale event of his performing career.
The gala came first, on Friday 7 August 2026. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex travelled to Victoria to attend, alongside Adam Levine and Josh Groban; McPhee has known Meghan since childhood. The hosts announced on the following night that the gala had raised $14.5 million.
The free concert followed on Saturday 8 August in the Inner Harbour, with the main stage built on a floating 180-foot vessel, Straits 153, weighing 789 tonnes. The city expected around 50,000 people and put large LED screens in front of the Legislature lawn and the Fairmont Empress; the audience watched from the lawn, from Belleville Street, and from boats and paddleboards on the water. Groban, McPhee, CeeLo Green, The Tenors, Pia Toscano, Daniel Emmet and Loren Allred performed, with Erich Bergen and Melissa Peterman co-hosting, the Canadian Forces Snowbirds overhead and fireworks at the end. Music began at about 7.30pm. "It's so good to be back home in my hometown, Victoria, British Columbia," Foster told the crowd, and near the close called the night a love letter to the city.
The circuit now, and a disagreement about new songs
The touring vehicle is An Intimate Evening with David Foster and Katharine McPhee, and it runs on a pattern of one- and two-nighters in performing-arts centres and casino showrooms rather than arenas. Autumn 2026 ran through Stony Brook on 26 September and The Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda on 29 September; the Mayo Performing Arts Center date in Morristown, rescheduled from 6 February, landed on 27 September. Two shows at Sharon L. Morse in The Villages on 12 November, at 4pm and 7pm, lead into Florida dates at the Mahaffey Theater in St Petersburg on 13 November, the Van Wezel in Sarasota on 14 November and Artis-Naples on 16 November.
The 2027 run is already posted: Red Bank, Englewood, Foxwoods and Lowell across 27–30 January; the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert on 12 and 13 February, Cerritos on 16 February and Graton on 19 February; then Austin City Limits Live, Dallas's Winspear Opera House, the Genesee in Waukegan, Shipshewana and Detroit between 8 and 15 May.
There is an interesting tension about what comes after that. Foster curates the setlist himself and leaves it alone — "if it's not broke, why fix it" — and has been blunt that the worst thing an audience can hear is a performer announcing songs from the new album. On 6 October 2026, McPhee announced a joint tour for autumn 2027 built around new material, possibly extending to the UK, with the line "gonna leave the old days behind" and recording sessions in Nashville in the weeks ahead. Whose instinct wins will decide whether the 2027 show is the same machine or a different one.
The show, now
The touring show runs about 90 minutes straight through, with no interval and no support act. Foster sits at the piano with a trio — Keith Nelson on bass, Beau Cooper on keyboards and John "JR" Robinson on drums — and opens with instrumental medleys of his own hits before the storytelling starts. The structure alternates: Foster narrates how a song came about and who refused to sing it, then McPhee delivers it, with her own material from American Idol, Smash and Waitress threaded through. Recurring numbers include "The Prayer", Chicago's "You're the Inspiration", Earth, Wind & Fire's "After the Love Is Gone", Celine Dion's "The Power of Love", material from The Bodyguard, "Unforgettable", "You Raise Me Up", both St Elmo's Fire themes, "Singin' in the Rain" and McPhee's "Over the Rainbow" and "She Used to Be Mine"; her unexpected turn at Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" is among the most-played songs in the set. Guests appear when the diary allows — the America's Got Talent finalist Daniel Emmet sings operatic selections, Kenny G has turned up by video, and Foster's young son Rennie has taken the drum stool briefly. Staging is minimal: a piano, the band, lighting, no screens or scenery. McPhee has said the pair have become dependent on working together, liking the relief of seeing the other walk on. Critics tend to praise the music and the couple's chemistry while finding the talk uneven; reviewing the Kennedy Center night in February 2024, Hannah R. Wing called it a night full of catchy tunes with moments where the narrative needed adjusting to make it a genuinely intimate evening, and singled out some self-deprecating weight jokes as misfires.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · vicnews.com · victoria.ca · abcnews.com · ctvnews.ca · broadwayworld.com · saportareport.com
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0
Angela George at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sharongraphics/ · CC BY-SA 3.0
