Maya Fridman is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts.

More information about Maya Fridman

Born in 1989 in Moscow, Russia, Maya Fridman is a talented young artist residing in The Netherlands.

From her early years of playing the cello, Maya was recognised as a prodigy and was taken under the hood of the Foundation of Yuri Bashmet, where she took part in various TV and Radio programs. While studying at the Moscow State College of Music named after Alfred Schnittke, she was awarded as the First Prize Winner in the International Festival of Slavic Music among many other reputable awards.

In 2010, Maya has been granted admission at the Conservatory of Amsterdam where she studied under professor Dmitry Ferschtman. Here, on the 10th of June in 2016, she successfully finished a master’s degree with the highest honours, Cum Laude.

For the last nine years, Maya has been performing regularly in Europe, in renowned venues such as the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, TivoliVredenburg and the Vereeniging. Due to her vast musical interests, she always had a passion for improvisation and playing diverse musical styles. Each of her solo programs has a strong emotional impact on the audience and presents great works of the last century, as well as completely new works of contemporary composers.

In 2015, Maya released her first album The Invisible Link, featuring works of Alfred Schnittke, Pēteris Vasks, and Arvo Pärt, which she recorded together with pianist Daniël Kool, under the label TRPTK.

In 2017, she released two more albums: Elegy by Æon Trio with Atzko Kohashi and Frans van der Hoeven, and Red Velvet, a solo recording featuring works by Karen Tanaka, César Lüttger, Gaspar Cassadó, Oswaldo Golijov, Louis Andriessen, Kaveh Vares, and Alisa Apreleva. Both albums received international acclaim, Red Velvet receiving a Luister 10 award.

A later album features her own arrangement of Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel for cello and piano, on which she worked together with pianist Artem Belogurov. The recording received international acclaim, and was dubbed “… the best chamber music album I’ve heard in 20 years” by American magazine The Absolute Sound.

In 2019 Maya released Canti d’inizio e fine by composer Maxim Shalygin, to great critical acclaim. The album was chosen for Dutch newspaper Volkskrant’s “40 Best Albums of 2019”. Later in 2019, she released another album titled REIÐ, with works by David Lang, Michael Gordon, Fjóla Evans, Giovanni Sollima and John Tavener.

Maya was musician-in-residence with Gaudeamus in 2018/2019. In 2018 she was nominated for the Grachtenfestival Prijs, and in 2019, Maya won the coveted Dutch Classical Talent Award. She was Artist in Residence at TivoliVredenburg for season 2020/2021.