Athanasios Paivanas was born in Corinth.

He is a student of the First Cantor of the Great Church of Christ (Ecumenical Patriarchate), Thrasyvoulos Stanitsas, who taught him (1974 -1982) the art of chanting. As his pupil, he was a member of the choirs of Thrasyvoulos Stanitsas.

Currently, and since 1998, he is the founder, director and conductor of the Greek choir, Ergastiri Paltikis®, known internationally, as the leading choir in Byzantine Ecclesiastical Music in the world, with a successful repertoire of accomplishments in recitals, presentations, and recordings.

He was one of the founding members of the Byzantine choir “Maestros of the Art of Chant”, and one of the first collaborators of Mr. Gregory Stathis, professor of Musicology.

In 1983 Athanasios Paivanas was awarded a scholarship by the Conservatory of Athens. In 1987, he obtained his degree in Byzantine Music with honours from the Conservatory of the Association of Piraeus (with Professor G. Malaphis).

He also studied European music at the National Conservatory of Athens and the Conservatory of the Association of Piraeus, as well as classical music with the well-known tenor of the National Opera of Greece George Zervanos.

For more than 10 years he was a member of the choir of O.T.E. (Hellenic Telecommunications Company) and that of Corinth (conductor: Mr.A. Papagiannopoulos). With the support of the choir of O.T.E., he attended a series of seminars for choir conducting in Athens and Thessaloniki.

Athanasios Paivanas has lectured at the III, IV and V International Musicological Conference (Music Palace 2006, “Parnassos” Hall 2009, Athens University 2012) and also during the III World Congress of Byzantine Musical Culture (October 2011 and 2013, Athens).

In the summer of 2009, 2010 and 2011, he conducted the master class “Byzantine Music-Psaltik Art” at the International Festival “Academy of Orthodox Music” (St. Petersburg, Russia).

In 2012 and 2016, Athanasios Paivanas was invited by the School of Ecclesiastical Music (SEM) in Beirut (Lebanon), where he taught the SEM choir and together with the choir performed a concert of Byzantine Music. In the same year, in 2016, he was invited by the Institute of Orthodox Theology of Montreal to give a 2-day introduction class in Byzantine music which took place in the Small Vouli of the Hellenic Community of Montreal.

In 2017, the Axion Estin Foundation in New York invited him for a series of lectures.

Athanasios Paivanas became a collaborator of the School of Ecclesiastical Music of Montreal in 2018, and in May 2019 he was invited to give a week-long  Master Class in Byzantine Chant to our students.  A similar event was repeated and held in May 2023. 

He is a professor of Byzantine Music at the Hellenic Conservatory of Athens.

Athanasios Paivanas is a graduate of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of Athens (Department of Mathematics) with additional studies in Informatics. He has also obtained a Master of Business Administration at the University of Illinois, U.S.A.

He lives with his wife in Corinth, Greece.

External links: paivanas.gr, ergpsa.gr