Ionel Petroi is a Romanian-Serbian-French composer-pianist whose highly individual style is characterized by the unique rhythmic energy, expressive lyricism and inventive musical structures. Much of his music is influenced by Eastern Europe rhythms and melodies sometimes involving quarter tones (period 1984-1995), which in its entirety creates music of exceptional vitality.

Petroi has written over forty works for orchestra, solo piano, violin, voice, chamber ensembles, opera, ballet as well as music with data processing device. His works have been performed by the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, Orchestre d’ile de France, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Ensemble Itineraire (Paris), Ensemble Barcelona 216, Ensemble Modern (Moscow), cello octet of Beauvais (France), Trio Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Ensemble Die Reihen of Vienna, Ensemble Erwartung (Paris), Ensemble Archaeus (Bucharest), Ambrosia Trio (New York), San Francisco Ensemble, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Orchestre National de France. Many of his works were broadcast for radio and television, by Radio France, TF1, FR2, FR3 and Canal plus, as well as in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Luxembourg Spain, Yugoslavia, Romania, Russia and the USA.

Besides being a prolific classical composer, Petroi is an active film composer. He has composed film scores for fifteen films from various French, Canadian, Switzerland, Belgian and American productions, some of which have been presented at festivals in Cannes, Venice, Chicago, London, Kiev, Toronto and Stuttgart.

Universal Music Publishing MGB France-Durand, Ricordi and Salabert publish his music.

Faces 10

Faces 10 for string quartet belongs to the group of pieces that I entitled Musique relative. In these pieces melody and harmony are “deformed” by glissandi and quarter-tones and thus I refer to them as “relative melody and harmony”.

“Glissandi” are the main characteristis of the quartet Faces 10: melody and harmony are deformed by glissandi throughout the piece, from its beginning to its end.