Maria Papadatou

Maria Papadatou was born in 1972 in Athens. She is married and a mother of three children. She began her formal piano studies in 1987 at the Palladio Conservatory under the tutelage of Dora Rozi. Concurrently, she studied with the renowned composer and teacher Konstantinos Kydoniatis for her Diploma in Music Theory. She continued her education at the Attica Conservatory, where she delved into the art of Chamber Music under the guidance of internationally acclaimed cellist Petar Jovanovitch. In 1995, she obtained her Harmony Diploma (class of Ch. Kouris) and in 1996, her Piano Diploma with professor Eleni Christidou. Almost simultaneously, she completed her studies at the Professional Journalism Workshop. In 2000, she received a Piano Diploma from the Athenaeum Artistic Center (class of M. Aivazova). She pursued postgraduate studies in piano performance and pedagogy at the historic French Conservatory Schola Cantorum with professor Agathi Leimoni. As an active participant in piano seminars, she took lessons from Paul Badura-Skoda, Sontraud Speidel, Aquiles Delle Vigne, Sergey Senkov, Claudio Constantini, Rafael Salinas, Marina Pliassova, Borislava Taneva, Lilia Boyadjieva, Yuri Bogdanov, among others, and attended seminars on pedagogy and teaching (Gudrun Finder), music and movement/Orff (Maria Filianou), interpretation and analysis of works for piano by contemporary Greek composers (Efi Agrafioti), and contemporary foreign composers (Alexandros Kalogeras). Together with pianist Toula Sideridou, she collaborated from 2007 to 2012 on the interpretation of works for four hands and two pianos. Since 1997, she has taught at the Geitonas Schools in Vari and at the Nikos Skalkottas Conservatory, where she successfully conducts the group course in Piano Pre-education.