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, 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 jazz concerto The Eyes of Bidesuk, Denis Gougeon's En Accordeon 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, Sweden's Camerata Roman, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra, Sweden's Camerata Roman, Vancouver CBC Orchestra, the SMCQ ensemble, Symphony Nova Scotia, Windsor Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, ThunderBay Symphony Orchestra, Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony, Toronto's Soundstreams Ensemble, Concertante di Chicago and Montréal’s Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. In 2010 Mr. Petric performed three concertos in one night with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra.
The Universite de Montreal performance program supports rounded interpretation of music old and new with complementary studies of figured bass, contemporary improvisation, solo, chamber and concerto performances, extended contemporary techniques, palimpsest, translation theory, and research methodology. The faculty outreach program offers students performance opportunities with professional Canadian concert series and symphony orchestras. Mr. Petric has led masterclasses, lectured and performed at flagship European academies including the Amsterdam Conservatory, Royal Academy of Music, Trossingen Hochschule, and Paris Conservatoire and in Canada the University of British Columbia, Wilfred Laurier University, Dalhousie, McGill-Schulich, UQUAM, Bishop's, and the University of Toronto in Canada.
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 include the world premieres of concertos by Peter Paul Koprowski with the Toronto Symphony and Omar Daniel with the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Lutoslawski's Dance Preludes, Claude Vivier's Pulau Dewata, the complete Bach Trio Sonatas, in Chicago the American premiere of Gubaidulina's Seven Words, the American premiere of Berio's Accordion Sequenza XIII at the Tanglewood Festival, and the North American, Asian, European, Middle Eastern and UK premieres of Normand Forget's Die Winterreise with Christoph Pregardien for the Tokyo Spring Festival, the Berlin Philharmonie, the 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.