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. Furthermore, his pupil, during that time, was a member of the choirs of Thrasyvoulos Stanitsas. He was one of the founding members of the Byzantine choir “Masters of the Art of Chant”, and one of the first collaborators of Mr. Gregory Stathis, professor of Musicology.

In 1983 A. Paivanas participated in the competition of the Holy Archdiocese of Athens and was awarded the single scholarship offered for studies at the Athens Conservatory, where he had been a student. He obtained his degree in Byzantine Music with honors at the Conservatory of the Association of Piraeus (with the 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 choirs of O.T.E. (Organization of Telecommunications of Greece) 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.

Mr. A. 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 August 2012, A. 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.

With time, he consequently became the executive manager of O.T.E. and head of constructions for the development of Intelligent Network Services and ADSL, IP Network.
He is a professor of Byzantine Music at the Hellenic Conservatory of Athens. A. Paivanas is a graduate of Institute Physics and Mathematics of Athens (Department of Mathematics) with additional studies in Informatics. He has also obtained a Masters of Business Administration at the University of Illinois, U.S.A.
He lives with his wife in Pefki, Athens.