Sandra Joy Friesen is a pianist, teacher, and adjudicator with a broad range of repertoire and musical interests, from traditional to contemporary, to the interpretation of pictorial scores and interdisciplinary collaboration. She is an Off-Campus Instructor with the Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary, Alberta, teaching from Sound Reflections Music Studio in the Hawkwood NW area, and coaches chamber music at the University of Calgary. With 29 years of experience, Dr. Friesen enjoys teaching all levels and ages of piano and theory students and now provides online lessons.
Researching the developments in piano techniques, styles, and aesthetics, Sandra Joy has dedicated a large part of her career to lecture-recitals, presentations, and workshops on contemporary music. Her album Sound Reflections, Vol. 1: Off the Shelf was a project of audio plus video recordings that provide interpretive context and address challenges in technique and notation. She has performed as a soloist and a chamber musician throughout Canada, in the United States, in Austria, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Poland, and Slovenia. Promoting music of Canadian composers since the early 90s, Sandra Joy was invited by the Association for Canadian Studies in Mexico and Brazil to represent the University of Alberta and Canadian composers in solo piano recitals. She studied the art of improvisation and free-interpretation with Douglas Finch (London, England); a practice that continues to be an inspiration in performing and teaching. She is the pianist in RESPONS2, an interdisciplinary creation and performance duo with visual artist Werner Friesen, melding composed and improvised music with prepared artwork as well as live-response painting, and integrating artistic disciplines with composers, dancers, actors, and poets.
Her discography also includes "Garden of Music" by Alain Mayrand, a beautifully edited volume of solo piano music inspired by the poetry of R. L. Stevenson with illustrations by Mayrand himself; a 2-CD project "From the Beginning" with flutist Larry Krantz; "To the Garden the World" by Stephen Chatman (a work she commissioned for saxophone and piano, on the album "Earth Songs"), and as pianist for the West Coast Mennonite Chamber Choir on the album "Songs My Father Taught Me".
Sandra Joy completed the Doctor of Music degree as a scholar of the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies (University of Alberta) and holds degrees from the University of British Columbia (Master and Bachelor of Music) and Canadian Mennonite University (Bachelor of Church Music). She has received major awards for her work from the University of Alberta, Government of Canada, Canadian Federation of University Women (National), Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Alberta Foundation of the Arts, and the city of Edmonton. Dr. Friesen was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano in the Department of Music at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota from 2013-2015.