Ensembles
Most of my playing is with other people. These are the groups I play in regularly, from a contemporary music ensemble and my own percussion collective to several duos.
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Core member
Crash Ensemble
A new-music ensemble based in Dublin. With Crash I have played in Ireland, the USA and Lithuania and at Festival Musica in Strasbourg, taken part in many world premieres and recorded most of the ensemble's albums, including Barry O'Halpin's Wingform and Free State, on which I am the soloist in Dónal Sarsfield's The Snare Piece.
crashensemble.comAlbums I play on
Photo: Bríd O'Donovan
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Founder and director
Bangers and Crash Percussion
A collective of Irish percussionists, anything from a duo to a sextet with a stage full of instruments. We play concerts and festivals, tour, record, and give workshops in schools all over Ireland.
More about Bangers and Crash Percussion
Photo: Darragh Kane
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Duo with violist Nathan Sherman
Sherman | Petcu duo
Realising how little music existed for viola and percussion, we have commissioned a wide range of new works. Our albums Totemic (Ergodos) and Archetypes (Diatribe) present many of them, and in 2025 we premiered Kevin Volans's y Escucho a los Muertos con mis Ojos at Music for Galway.
More about Sherman | Petcu duo
Photo: Néstor Romero Clemente
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Percussionist
Stone Drawn Circles
Six musicians with exploratory music at the heart of our practice: Lina Andonovska (flutes), Nathan Sherman (viola), Michelle O'Rourke (voice), Caimin Gilmore (double bass), Úna Monaghan (harp and sound design) and me. Our debut season included premieres by Nicole Lizée, Úna Monaghan, Cat Hope and Brian Irvine, at hcmf// and New Music Dublin, an Irish tour and a PRS Foundation Beyond Borders tour of the UK. The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival called us a “supergroup within new music circles in Ireland”.
Photo: Néstor Clemente
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Duo with bass clarinettist Deirdre O'Leary
Wildwood
Deirdre and I played together for many years in Crash Ensemble, and as a duo we make programmes of funky rhythms and wildly beautiful sounds. We gave our first concerts in 2023, including the premiere of Barry O'Halpin's Heaving Moss, written for us, and in 2025 we played at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, Birr Theatre and Arts Centre, and the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge.
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Regular guest
Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble
A new-music ensemble based in Belfast. Concerts with them include Steve Reich's Double Sextet at Queen's University Belfast and, at the 2026 Belfast International Arts Festival, a programme marking Jane O'Leary's 80th birthday.
Photo: Thomas Jackson
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Regular guest
Evlana Ensemble
A flexible new-music group, from a small ensemble to a sinfonietta, founded by the composer Siobhán Cleary in 2015, with gender-balanced programming at its heart. I have played with them at New Music Dublin in 2021 and 2025, on their 2022 tour of Ireland and at the Finding a Voice festival in Clonmel.
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Duo with soprano Kelley Lonergan
Kelley and Alex
An eclectic programme of songs from all four corners of the globe, from the song and opera repertoire, reimagined with marimba, vibraphone and other tuned percussion.
Orchestras
I also play regularly with orchestras around Ireland, including the National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Irish Baroque Orchestra and Ulster Orchestra, and in opera and theatre, from Irish National Opera's Powder Her Face to the Abbey Theatre's Twelfth Night.