Piano lessons for beginner, intermediate & advanced students
Joseph Fridman, M.Mus.
Mr. Fridman has earned two masters’ degrees – as a pianist and opera director – from the world-renowned St. Petersburg Conservatory.
He is a concert pianist, teacher, vocal coach and accompanist. He has taught at the Schools for Musically Gifted Children of St. Petersburg and Kiev, and at the Pskov Music College. He has performed with the St. Petersburg and Pskov Philharmonics.
Mr. Fridman served on the faculty of the Alberta College Conservatory of Music in Edmonton from 1991 till 2002 and taught in the Conservatory’s International Music Academy and the University of Alberta.
Currently, Joseph is a director and a piano teacher of the Alberta Music Academy in Edmonton. He lectures and gives masterclasses/workshops in Canada, Ukraine, the USA and has taught in various summer schools: Strings and Keys (Bergen), Alberta College Summer School (Edmonton), and has been a clinician in the CASSA (Calgary) summer camp.
Joseph has adjudicated a number of festivals and competitions, including the prestigious Canadian Music Competition (2004).
His piano students have received first class honors and medals in RCM Exams, first and second prizes in the Kiwanis Festival, Northern Alberta Concerto Competition and Fall Festival.
Joseph Fridman performs in solo and chamber recitals and has been broadcast frequently on CBC Radio.
Tanya Fridman, M.Mus.
Tanya Fridman has received her Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance from the prestigious St.Petersburg Conservatory.
She is a concert pianist, accompanist, piano and piano pedagogy teacher.
Tanya taught piano at the Alberta College Conservatory of Music from 1991 until 2002 when she established the Alberta Music Academy Inc. with her husband Joseph Fridman.
In the year of 2000 Tanya created “Musical Encounters”– a series of concerts for children in which music, poetry, puppetry, visual arts and dance were brought together. All concerts were sold-out events.
To make first steps into music memorable and enjoyable for her younger students, she has developed a program for children ages 4 to 7 based on a system of musical games called “Discover Music”™.
Her students of intermediate and advanced levels have received medals for achieving the highest marks in Alberta in their piano and theory exams. They are winners and scholarship recipients of the numerous piano festivals and competitions.
Matthew Wicks, B. Mus.
As a pianist, Matthew Wicks has received several awards - Gerry Segger Scholarship for Performance Excellence (2011), a grant from the Winspear Fund, scholarships from the Anne Burrows Foundation, Women's Musical Club of Toronto and Toronto Summer Music Academy.
In 2010, Mr. Wicks received a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. Matthew also has two diplomas in piano performance: an Associate of the Royal Conservatory Toronto diploma (ARCT in 2003) and a Piano Performance Diploma (PDP in 2008) at The Glenn Could School of The Royal Conservatory. His primary piano teachers were Ina Dykstra, Andrew Markow, Joachim Segger.
Matthew has also studied composition and theory with Omar Daniel, and with jazz aficionado George Thurgood. His conducting studies were with Yuri Meyer and Alain Trudel. In Toronto, Matthew performed in masterclasses for Leon Fleisher, Andre Laplante, John Perry, and Kum Sing Lee.
Matthew has been teaching piano & keyboard lessons since 1998 and music theory, harmony and history since 2010. He has been a member of The Alberta Music Academy faculty since August 2008.
Neil Ren
Neil has been studying music from a young age and will receive his Bachelor's in Piano Performance from the University of Alberta in 2026, where he studies closely with Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp. During his studies, Neil performed solo and collaboratively countless times, including for accompaniment, university competitions, lecture recitals, masterclasses, and solo recitals. Neil was the recipient of the Harry Farmer Scholarship in Music Performance, Luc Barton Memorial Scholarship in Music, Wendy Matthewson Scholarship in Music, Judy R. Shelley Scholarship in Classical Piano, and Edmonton Campus Fund Academic Scholarship. He has also performed in masterclasses with the accomplished pianists Rolf Bertsch, John Burge, Phillip Chiu, Jan Jiraský, and Sontraud Spiedel. Neil also has experience singing choir and studying a wide variety of topics during his education, ranging from cognitive science and piano pedagogy to Western history and philosophy, all of which he integrates into his teaching.
Neil has been a piano teacher since 2020, providing personalized lessons based on the goals of his students. He believes in establishing strong fundamentals and providing students with the tools necessary to learn as effectively as possible while keeping lessons engaging and enjoyable.