background

...an informal introduction...

growing up in a family of professional classical violinists, ioana was fascinated watching her parents practice and perform and began her first violin lessons with her father, adrian petcu, at the age of four. she soon showed an aptitude and at six took to the stage, winning almost every competition at regional and national level.

at the age of fifteen ioana went to france where she studied with constantin serban leaving nine months later with fluent french and the prestigious medaille d'or a l'unanimite. her undergraduate years were spent under the tuition of lydia mordkvitch and erich gruenberg at the royal academy of music in london, from where she now holds a first-class honours bmus performance degree, and she followed with a first-class ma in performance awarded by the cork school of music for her studies with gregory ellis and mariana sirbu.

over the years ioana has enjoyed solo performances of many of the great violin concertos including mozart, beethoven, khatchaturian, prokofiev, shostakovich, bach and bruch. she has recorded the latter for commercial release on the lyric fm label with the rte concert orchestra and has also performed several shorter and virtuosic works with various orchestras.

with a deep love of chamber music, ioana has explored the extensive repertoire as violinist with several ensembles, with notable highlights including her performing the complete beethoven piano and violin sonatas in concert and her former position as leader and founder member of the callino quartet with whom she toured, coached and recorded for seven years. ioana is now violinist with piano trio ensemble avalon with whom she has recently recorded a cd for the lyric label and is currently the youngest member of the irish chamber orchestra.

as a young artist ioana feels strongly about the promotion of contemporary work and is dedicated to her role in increasing audience awareness of new music, particularly that of irish composers. she has performed commissions and world premiers on radio and television working with composers such as arvo part and peteris vasks and has enjoyed collaborations with a wide variety of international artists such as john abercrombie, edgar meyer, martin hayes and dennis cahill and canadian rock band arcade fire. her recording of ian wilson's string quartets is available on the riverrun label and she has recently premiered ronan guilfoyle's second sonata for violin and piano in ireland and his solo violin sonata in ireland and japan. most recently, ioana has been invited by publishing house universal edition to join a project linking contemporary composers and performers to young gifted musicians.

ioana enjoys a richly varied career performing works spanning three centuries from the baroque era to the present day. she is an accomplished soloist and is an experienced and much-respected chamber musician travelling the world to perform from her current home in barcelona.

(for a professional biography visit the download page)