Ioannis Arvanitis

    Arvanitis Ioannis: Curriculum Vitae
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Ioannis Arvanitis was born in Evia, Greece. He studied Physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Byzantine Chant under Spiros Simitzis (Chalkis Music School) and Simon Karas (School of the Society for the Dissemination of National Music). He took his diploma from “Nikos Skalkottas” Music School (Lykourgos Angelopoulos’ class). He has been engaged from a young age in the study of Greek folk song, and he plays the tambura (a folk lute-like instrument), tanbur, oud and laouto. He has appeared in many concerts of traditional Greek and oriental music. Regarding the Byzantine chant, he has a continuous church singing activity from 1982 till today, having sung in various churches in Chalkis and in Athens as well as abroad (Constantinople, USA). He has also participated as invited soloist and choir conductor in many concerts in Greece and abroad with vocal ensembles like Cappella Romana and Ensemble Organum. He is a founder and director of the Byzantine choir Agiopolitis, which has given concerts in Greece and abroad, and performed in various Services and All-night Vigils.

He has taught Byzantine and traditional Greek music as well as tambura at the Experimental Music High School of Pallini since the first year of its founding. He also taught Byzantine Music at various Music Schools, at the Dpt. of Music Studies of Ionian University, Corfu (1994 – 2002), in the postgraduate program “Byzantine Musicology” at the same University (2015-18), as well as in the undergraduate program “Psaltic Art” of the European University of Cyprus (2020-23). He worked at the Manuscripts Dpt. of the National Library of Greece, cataloguing and studying the Byzantine musical manuscripts kept there (2014-18).

He has an in-depth knowledge and longtime involvement with the interpretation (transcription) of the old Byzantine musical notation in all its forms and stages as well as with the theory of Byzantine Music in general, old and new, and has taught in related seminars in and out of Greece. He took his PhD in 2010 from the Ionian University with a dissertation on the rhythm of the old chants through a new (of his own), short interpretation of the old musical notation. He has also transcribed a lot of old chants from the old notation into the one used nowadays. At the same time, he himself has composed a plethora of chants for use in the church offices, which are already being sung in many churches around the Orthodox world.