Cited for '...the kind of playing that makes audiences of all kinds sit up and listen' (The Independent) Mr. Petric's acclaimed London debut began his trajectory into the world's international concert halls with performances including thematic recitals devoted entirely to world premieres, Scarlatti recitals played from manuscript facsimiles, the complete Trio Sonatas of J.S. Bach in one evening, to microtonal improvisations with Pauline Oliveros, and original curations of chambermusic ancient and new. Mr. Petric's performance of the Accordion Sequenza at Berio's 75th birthday celebration at Seiji Ozawa Hall was cited a highlight by the The New York Times. His Wigmore Hall performance in Normand Forget's chamber version of Schubert’s Winterreise with Christoph Prégardien was noted for his "...extraordinary grasp of the accordion’s ability to sound like “breath from another planet” (Paul Reed,Classical Source.)
The dedicatee of 20 concertos, Mr. Petric began his concerto led career with Peter Paul Koprowski's Accordion Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra followed by the performance of three concertos in one night with the Victoria Symphony. Performance highlights include concertos written for him by Koprowski, Denis Gougeon, Omar Daniel, Norman Symonds and Gunnar Valkare. Petric's premiere of the Valkare concerto Viaggio at Sweden's Kalmar Castle was followed up with a London premiere critically acclaimed for “astonishing bravura...” (Musical Opinion). He has appeared as soloist with the London BBC Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra, the Camerata Roman of Sweden, the Concertante di Chicago; l'Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Toronto Symphony, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, SMCQ ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Windsor Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic, ThunderBay Symphony, Sherbrooke Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, and the Soundstreams Ensemble among others.
Invited to a professorship created for him Mr Petric leads the graduate accordion department at the Universite de Montreal, Faculte de Musique. Students have access fo informed interpretation, period performance, contemporary comissioning and collaboration and career development in professional performance opportunities with established Canadian concert series, ensembles, and symphony orchestras to complement their academic experience.
Mr. Petric's strategic collaborations with the Canadian Electronic Ensemble (CEE), and members of Québec’s Association pour la Création et la Recherche Electroacoustiques du Québec (ACREQ) delivered unprecedented innovation for the concert hall with 43 commission works exploring CD or WAVEfile playback, sequencers, live processing, digital delay, CX5M and MAC computers, software processing, AI, live video and software applications. His work is documented in Alexa Woloshyn's book A History of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble ( Queen's-McGill Press) and Wholenote (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.”
Premiere highlights by Mr. Petric include concerto premieres by written for him by Peter Paul Koprowski, Omar Daniel, Gunnar Valkare, Paul Frehner, Abigail Richardson-Schulte, and Boyd McDonald; electroacoustics in Christos Hatzis's Orbiting Garden, David Jaeger's Shadowbox, Peter Hatch's Pneuma, chamber music in Marjan Mozetich Dance of the Blind, Witold Lutoslawski's Dance Preludes, Claude Vivier's Pulau Dewata, the complete Bach Trio Sonatas for accordion and oboe with Normand Forget, the American premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina's Seven Words and Berio's Accordion Sequenza. He gave the World, Asian, European, and Middle Eastern premieres of Normand Forget's Die Winterreise with Christoph Pregardien.
Mr. Petric's inaugural festival direction was Toronto's Big Squeeze Accordion Festival in collaboration with Derek Andrews, HarbourfontCentre and the CBC's Two New Hours. His artistic stewardship 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 as well as the Canadian premiere presentation of the Complete Berio Sequenzas for the University of Toronto New Music Festival with co-director David Hetherington.