Joseph Petric

He was born in Guelph, Ontario and raised in Acton,[1] to a family of the political diaspora that left Slovenia in 1945. Taken by his father to his first accordion lesson at age five, he studied with local teachers until 1968, when he enrolled at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music. In 1975 he completed his Bachelor of Music at Queen's University, Kingston. That same year, he moved to Toronto and completed his master's degree in Musicology in 1977. Influenced by the Toronto visit of Swiss accordionist Hugo Noth in 1975, Petric studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen in 1977.[2]

In October 1979, Petric made his Canadian debut with Toronto's Arraymusic Ensemble, and became the first accordionist to win the CBC National Radio Auditions, which launched his career on both the English and French radio services of Canada.[3] He started his international career in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Centre in 1986 and in London at St John's, Smith Square in 1992.

Throughout the 1980s, his artistic activity included commissioning, performing and recording,[4] with invitations from Serge Garant and Montreal's SMCQ ensemble, ACREQ, the string quartets Alcan and St. Germain, the NEM Ensemble, and Pentaèdre; he received invitations to the McGill, Domaine Forget, and Bic St. Fabien festivals. He was the artistic director of The Big Squeeze accordion festival in Toronto in 1991, as well as the Virtuosi Series for the CBC at the Glenn Gould Hall in 1993. In 1998, he turned his attention to the research of period performance practices and instrument building, with the assistance of a Canada Council Senior Artist's Grant, working with period keyboard artists Colin Tilney and Boyd McDonald[5]

In 2000, he became the artistic director for the Carte Blanche Series in Montreal for the Société Radio Canada, and Quebec City in 2003.

His postmodern approaches attracted the marketing support of four international management companies: MGAM in Toronto, NCCP in London, Sarah Turner Communications in Paris, and Columbia Artists in New York City; as well as financial support of the Koussevitsky Foundation, CBC, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He enjoyed special relationships with Bob Aitken's New Music Concerts in Toronto, the Societe Contemporaine de Quebec in Montreal, the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, and composer Witold Lutoslawski.[6] A steady stream of international tours followed, with up to 80 concerts a year, and international recordings for CBC, SRC, BBC Radio 3, and PBS (USA). His numerous collaborations include: the Petric-Forget Duo, Pentaèdre, Canada’s Penderecki Quartet, Duo Contempera, the Trio Diomira, Pauline Oliveros, and the ensembles Erosonic and Bellows and Brass.

Other notable performances include: premiere performance and recording of Peter Paul Koprowski's Accordion Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1996); Berio Sequenza at Tanglewood's Seiji Ozawa Hall, with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (2000); the sock puppet opera, The Perfect Cake, by Alain Trudel; Linda Bouchard's multi-disciplinary work Murderous Little World with Bellows and Brass; the Hohenems Schubertiade with tenor Christoph Pregardien, and the Montreal's Pentaèdre in Normand Forget's chamber version of Die Winterreise(2009); the Israeli Opera Tel Aviv (2011), and the Berlin Philharmonic Series[7] (2013).

By 2010 his postmodern discography numbered 32 CD titles. In 2013 he co-directed the first Canadian performance of the complete Berio Sequenze for the University of Toronto New Music Festival.[8] He was honored by the Canadian recording industry with a JUNO nomination for Best Composition in 2003; Quebec's Prix Opus for Best Concert in 2009; and a Prix Opus in 2011, for Best Recording.[9] He was awarded the designation "Friend of Canadian Music" by the Canadian Music Centre in 2005, and the designation "Ambassador of Canadian Music" in a public ceremony at Ottawa's National Arts Centre in 2009. In 2013, the IMC, UNESCO and the Confédération internationale des accordéonistes presented Petric with the Award of Merit, for outstanding lifetime contributions to the accordion.[10]

• Official website
• Joseph Petric's channel on YouTube