Fingerprints at The MAC, Belfast

March 2026

Fingerprints is a live, fully improvised performance experience at The MAC, where music, drawing and projection meet in real time. Nothing is fixed in advance. Sound, image, movement and atmosphere emerge together in the moment, shaped by the performers, the visual artists and the presence of the audience. What you are about to see will only happen once.

The experience begins in The Crush at 3.15pm and 6.15pm with a free pop-up performance that opens the door into the world of the piece. Here, visual artist Heidi Nguyen paints and draws live as the musicians perform entirely from their imaginations. Lasting around 30 minutes, it is not simply an introduction but part of the work itself: a first unfolding of the shared language that runs through the evening.

From there, Fingerprints expands in the Upstairs Theatre into a larger immersive performance. A cast of accomplished concert musicians moves among the seated audience, weaving together the tones and textures of flutes, violin, viola, trombone and percussion into a live sound world that feels intimate, searching and cinematic. On a large screen, Steve Meyfroidt shapes fluid visual worlds with custom-built software, responding to the music, the musicians’ movement and the energy of the room as it shifts and gathers.

The project itself grew in much the same way. It began with a chance meeting between Steve and Ioana while both were studying on a drawing course with the Open College of the Arts. What followed was a slow collaboration at a distance, before ideas took physical shape in Belfast, where Ioana, Ross and Steve met at Digital Arts Studios for an early session with violin, trombone and a first version of the drawing software. Months later, at Cork School of Music in summer 2025, the full team came together and the possibility of a longer live work began to feel real. After nine more months of intense making, listening and refinement, Fingerprints arrives at The MAC as its première: a live work shaped by time, trust and the unmistakable imprint of each artist within it.

People

Ioana Petcu-Colan

Communication lies at the heart of Ioana Petcu-Colan’s creative practice, a violinist and visual artist balancing a dynamic and diverse freelance career as guest orchestra leader, soloist and collaborator with her roles as Leader of the Ulster Orchestra and faculty member of the Royal Irish Academy of Music

Steve Meyfroidt

Steve Meyfroidt is a visual artist whose collaborative practice with musicians centres on computational drawing and process, using custom software and evolving systems to explore how sound and gesture shape visual form.

Heidi Nguyen

Heidi Nguyen is a French painter and printmaker based in Ireland. She studied art in Paris in Atelier Penninghen and is inspired by the Abstract Color Field and Impressionist movements.

Alex Petcu

Curiosity, versatility and innovation are central to percussionist Alex Petcu’s work. Finding music in the mundane, Alex delights in creating instruments from recycled and repurposed materials, integrating them seamlessly into both existing and new music as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, teacher and collaborator.

Ross Lyness

Head of Wind, Brass and Percussion at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Ross Lyness also plays Principal Trombone with both the Irish National Opera and Wexford Opera Festival Orchestras in addition to his busy teaching schedule and freelance performing work.

Amy Prendergast

Amy Prendergast is a lecturer at MTU Cork School of Music. She holds Master degrees in Drama & Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin, Drama & Movement Therapy from Central School of Speech and Drama, Music Performance from MTU Cork School of Music, and Contemporary Dance Performance from University of Limerick. She continues her studies in embodiment and somatic practices with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Russell Maliphant. Her focus is presence and play in performance and practice.

Lina Andonovska

Lina Andonovska is an internationally acclaimed flutist whose performances have been described as “re-defining the act of going solo” (The Age). A member of Grammy Award-winning contemporary ensemble Eighth Blackbird, she appears worldwide as a soloist, orchestral musician, chamber musician, educator and collaborator, celebrated for fearless interpretations of music.