Gregorios Stathis was born in 1939 in Platania-Gerakarion, Ioannina. He received his musical education in Athens and later furthered his studies in Rome, Oxford and Copenhagen. In 1970 he was appointed at the newly established Institute of the Byzantine Musicology of the Church of Greece and currently he is its director. At the same time he is a professor at the University of Athens and the head of its Musicology department.
Prof. Stathis' publications to date number well over three hundred and deal with various aspects of the Byzantine chant and Greek folk music. Among his books one must mention the monumental cataloguing project of the music mss preserved on Mt. Athos (three volumes have been published and other four are under preparation), his doctoral thesis "He dekapentesyllabos Ymnographia en te Byzantine mousike", "Hoi anagrammatismoi kai ta mathemata tes Byzantines melopoiias" (a work dealing with the anagrammatismoi and mathemata - a genre of the Byzantine chant) and "He exegesis tes palaias Byzantines semeiographias" (a book on the Old method of the Byzantine chant and its transcription into the New Method). Among ongoing projects one can single out the preparation of the detailed catalogue of the protographa in the New method, the catalogue of the mss of Gregorios Protopsaltes preserved in the library of Konstantinos Psachos and the catalogue of the music mss preserved in Meteora.
Prof. Stathis has transcribed from the Old method a large number of the compositions by Parthenios Meteorites (18th c.) as well as the studying tool of the old sticheraric chant "Ho thelon mousiken mathein" by Panagiotes Chrysaphes the New (17th c.). At the same time he is active in the compositional field having set to music the two services of the Asmatic rite of the Great Church, Pannychis and Trithekte and the Nativity Kontakion by St. Romanos. He has also written music for the service of the consecration of a church and Sunday Prokeimena and Allelouiaria.
Under Prof. Stathis' direction the Institute of the Byzantine Musicology became a leading research institution in the field of the Byzantine musicology. He was the chairman of the organising committees of two conferences on the Psaltic art held under the auspicies of the Church of Greece which were attended by the renowned Greek and foreign musicologists and chanters.
Worth mentioning is Prof. Stathis' prolific cooperation with the late Archon Protopsaltes of the Great Church Thrasyboulos Stanitsas with whom he produced three LPs with music by Petros Lampadarios, Gregorios Protopsaltes and Petros Bereketes. He assisted the Athonite fathers with the CD "Hosios Simon" published by Simonopetra monastery and prepared the choir of Ormylia nuns for their recording of the vigil of St. Mary Magdalene.
