Mr. Petric launched his solo career with an official debut recital at St. John’s Smith Square, London that “produced the kind of playing that makes audiences of all kinds sit up and listen” (The Independent). Petric's quest to engage with new audiences includes recitals of world premiers and commissioned works, Scarlatti sonatas with manuscript facsimiles, Romantic works with an 1852 Streicher fortepiano, and thematic Baroque recitals including the complete trio sonatas of J.S. Bach. Mr. Petric's performance of the Accordion Sequenza at Seiji Ozawa Hall with the Boston Symphony players was cited as a highlight performance in Luciano Berio's 75th birthday concert by the New York Times, and his Wigmore Hall performance of Schubert’s Winterreise with Christoph Prégardien and Pentaedre was noted for his "...extraordinary grasp of the accordion’s ability to sound like “breath from another planet” (Classical Source).
The dedicatee of 20 concertos, Mr. Petric’s premiere of Peter Paul Koprowski's Accordion Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra launched his concerto led career. Commission highlights include Norman Symond's Third Stream jazz concerto The Eyes of Bidesuk, Denis Gougeon's En Accordeon, Brian Current’s AccordionConcerto, and Omar Daniel's Murder Ballads. Gunnar Valkare's Viaggio (1996) commissioned by Swedish Reikskonzerter was premiered by Petric at Sweden's Kalmar Castle, his London premiere of the work acclaimed for “astonishing bravura...” (Musical Opinion). He has appeared as concerto soloist with the l’Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, London's BBC Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra, Sweden's Camerata Roman, Vancouver CBC Orchestra, the SMCQ ensemble, the Vancouver Symphony, and Montréal’s Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. In 2010 Mr. Petric performed three concertos in one night with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra.
Mr Petric's performance program at the Universite de Montreal, Faculte de Musique (Quebec) offers flexible study options that include figured bass, improvisation, solo and chambermusic studies, extended contemporary techniques and research methodology. Students are encouraged to perform with established professional concert series as part of the faculty outreach program. Mr. Petric has led masterclasses, lectured and performed at most major academies across Europe including London's Royal Academy, the Amsterdam Conservatory, Trossingen Hochschule, Paris Conservatoire and the Penderecki and Paderewski Akademies among others; in Canada at the Universite de Montreal, UBC, WLU, Dalhousie U., McGill-Schulich, UQUAM, Bishop's University and the University of Toronto.
Mr. Petric merged the ideals of Hugh LeCaine's (1914-77) inventions of nuanced electronic instruments developed at Canada's NRC in 1945 with the stereophonic accordion in historic collaborations with the Canadian Electronic Ensemble (CEE) and Québec’s Association pour la Création et la Recherche Electroacoustiques du Québec (ACREQ) resulting in 49 commissions for concert hall audiences using CD or WAVEfile playback, live processing, digital delay, CX5M and MAC computers, software processing, AI, live video and software applications. Public reception of this addition to the canon was noted by critic Tiina Kiik: “Petric has an international following…his performance of Hatzis’s Orbiting Garden is a powerhouse explosion of florid musical rock star lines… impeccable control of sound shaping the performance between accordion and sound machines … The composers and soloist have created an accessible, culturally important aural experience to be heard time and again.” (WholeNote)
Highlights among Petric's more than 350 premieres include concertos by Peter Paul Koprowski with the Toronto Symphony, Omar Daniel with the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Brian Current with Symphony Nova Scotia. He gave the world premiere of Christos Hatzis' electroacoustic Orbiting Garden; the American premiere of Gubaidulina's Seven Words with the Concertante di Chicago and strings of the Chicago Lyric Opera; the American premiere of Berio's Accordion Sequenza XIII at Tanglewood Festival, and the North American, Asian, European, Middle Eastern and UK premieres of Normand Forget's chamber version of Schubert's Die Winterreise with Christoph Pregardien at the Berlin Philharmonic, Tokyo Spring, Tel Aviv Opera and London's Wigmore Hall.
Mr. Petric's inaugural direction of Toronto's Big Squeeze Accordion Festival in collaboration with Derek Andrews, HarbourfontCentre and the CBC's Two New Hours was followed by invitations to direct the CBC’s Virtuosi Series at Toronto's Glenn Gould Studio, numerous Carte Blanche concerts in Quebec for Societe Radio Canada broadcast live to air from Montreal's Salle Pierre Mercure, Québec City's Cathedrale de St. Trinite and New Brunswick's Bay de Chaleurs festival and the first Canadian presentation of the Complete Berio Sequenzas for the University of Toronto New Music Festival with co-director David Hetherington.