Ioana Petcu Colan is currently Leader of the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast, alongside which she continues to enjoy a rich and diverse freelance life.

On both modern and baroque violin, Ioana has performed a considerable number of solo works with orchestra including many of the great concertos, as well as shorter works and more contemporary offerings from composers such as Philip Glass, John Tavener and Arvo Pärt. Ioana’s recording of the Bruch Violin Concerto with the RTÉCO continues to get regular airplay on Lyric FM and her performance of Ian Wilson’s third violin concerto ‘Sullen Earth’ with the Ulster Orchestra was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

Ioana has also toured internationally, recorded, broadcast and coached in her various roles as first violin; as former founder member of the prize-winning Callino Quartet, with piano trio Ensemble Avalon and with South American folk band Lunfardía. Chamber collaborations have been with artists as diverse as Barry Douglas (piano), John Abercrombie (jazz guitarist), Martin Hayes (trad fiddle) and Arcade Fire (indie rock) and as a member of an all-female violin quartet joining the then leaders of RTÉ National Symphony, RTÉ Concert and the Irish Chamber Orchestras on tour.

Alongside her role at the Ulster Orchestra, Ioana is in increasing demand as a leader, joining a variety of orchestras at home and abroad as guest concertmaster. She teaches at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and at Queens University, Belfast, and regularly appears as panellist and jury member on competitions and examination boards both North and South.

During the first lockdown of 2021, Ioana discovered a love of drawing and, within a year, had work included in both the RUA Belfast and RHA Dublin annual exhibitions. Her working life as violinist is integral to her drawing practice – with parallels between the two art-forms appearing as fragments of memory and reinterpretations of identity, and reinforced through contemporary applications of academic drawing principles.

Originally from Cork, Ioana also lived in London and Barcelona before finally calling Bangor home in 2010, where she now lives with her trombonist husband and their two daughters.