Bio
Paola Savvidou, DMA, NCTM, is a pianist, pedagogue, and leading performing arts wellness advocate. She serves as Wellness Program Manager and Lecturer IV at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Previously, she served as Assistant Teaching Professor at East Carolina University and as Assistant Professor of Piano Pedagogy at the University of Missouri where she taught applied piano, undergraduate and graduate courses in piano pedagogy and wellness, and coordinated the Group Piano Program. In her role at Michigan, she has developed a comprehensive array of services that involve onsite clinics to support physical and mental health, and educational resources, including teaching her own staple course, Wellness for the Performing Artist. Through partnerships within Michigan Medicine and the U-M campus she has brought world-class care to students, faculty, and staff.
As a proponent of healthy-living for musicians, she utilizes a holistic approach that incorporates mindfulness and well-being practices in her teaching. She frequently presents related research work at prominent conferences including the MTNA National Conference, the Performing Arts Medicine Association International Symposium, and The Piano Conference. Her work has won Article of the Year through the Music Teachers National Association three times; in 2015 for her article “In Search of the ‘Perfect’ Musical Performance,” in 2016 for her interdisciplinary research article “Assessing Injury Risk in Pianists: Using Objective Measures to Promote Self-Awareness,” and in 2021 for the article “Breathe and Move: Effects of a Twelve-Week Yoga Curriculum on Pre-Collegiate and Collegiate Pianists,” co-authored with Drs. Christopher Madden and Elaina Burns. She co-authored At the Piano with Yoga with Haley Myers; a collection of duets for beginning piano students coupled with yoga poses. Dr. Savvidou’s book entitled Teaching the Whole Musician: A Guide to Supporting Music Students’ Wellness was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.
In 2025, her research team investigating post-concussion clinical recommendations to support university performing arts students won the “Innovative Practice Award” from the American Physical Therapy Association–Orthopedics. In 2024, she was honored to receive the “LaVaughn Palma-Davis Award” for a Wellness Committee through University of Michigan’s MHealthy for her work in promoting well-being among faculty and staff at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and the SMTD “Belonging Award” for building a community of inclusivity and support for all students within the performing arts. Her excellence in teaching was recognized through the prestigious “Purple Chalk Teaching Award” by the College of Arts & Science Student Council in Spring 2015 at the University of Missouri.
As a performer, she has extensive experience commissioning and performing works by living composers as a member of the New Muse Piano Duo; a four-hand piano ensemble that has performed across the United States, Norway, Greece, and Cyprus. The ensemble’s CD, transhuman, was released in 2017 by the Blue Griffin label and featured works by Gabriel Prokofiev, Amy Williams, and Emily Doolittle. As a chamber pianist, she has performed with Alarm Will Sound, and with members of Third Coast Percussion and [Switch~ Ensemble]. As a solo pianist, she recorded the titular track for David Patterson’s #Ferguson (Albany Records, TROY1672), and was a member of the five-person commissioning consortium for James Romig’s Still, which was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Dr. Savvidou is a member of the Wellness Committee for The Piano Conference and previously served as chair for the MTNA e-Journal’s editorial board. She frequently adjudicates piano events such as the Michigan Music Teachers Association Student Achievement Testing, National Guild of Piano Teachers, and Federation of Music Clubs. She is an active member of her local, regional, and national piano teaching communities, and maintains a mindfulness-informed piano studio for all ages called Music Lotus in Ann Arbor, MI, that offers private instruction and online adult piano courses.
She is a trained kids yoga teacher with Rainbow Kids Yoga, holds a BM from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, graduate degrees (MM and DMA) in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Wellness Counseling Certificate from Cornell University.
Education
BM, University of North Carolina – Greensboro
MM, DMA (piano performance and pedagogy), University of Wisconsin – Madison
Wellness Counseling Certificate, Cornell University