THE LUMIERE QUARTET
Ioana Petcu-Colan, violin
Elaine Clark, violin
Nathan Sherman, viola
Carina Drury, cello

IOANA PETCU-COLAN, violin

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.

ELAINE CLARK, violin

Born in Aberdeen, Elaine Clark studied with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she won several awards and prizes. After graduating with a First Class Honors Degree, she continued her studies with Viktor Liberman at the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands.In 1996, she was appointed Co-Leader of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and has performed many concerti, including those of Berg, Brahms (Double Concerto), Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart (Fifth Violin Concerto, as soloist and director) with various orchestras in Scotland and England. Since joining the RTÉ NSO, she has been a regular soloist with the orchestra, most recently in performances of Prokofiev Concerto No. 1, Tippet's Triple concerto as well as Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, for which she was soloist and director.

NATHAN SHERMAN, viola

Nathan Sherman is a viola player who enjoys a versatile career. He was immediately attracted to the darker sonorities of the viola from a young age and chose to explore the instrument and its repertoire further at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Royal Academy of Music and the Escuela Superior de Musica Catalunya in Barcelona. Nathan is especially interested in contemporary music, where the viola has its richest and most diverse repertoire. He has premiered many works for viola, and has played and recorded with Crash Ensemble, Kirkos, and Evlana, and recently released a critically acclaimed album of new music for viola and percussion Totemic on Ergodos Records. He regularly performs in the historical performance groups Irish Baroque Orchestra, Camerata Kilkenny and Ensemble Marsyas, and with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra and Ulster Orchestra. Nathan is Artistic Director of Ficino Ensemble and runs a community-based orchestra called the Offbeat Ensemble which raises money for music education projects for children.