Born in Chania in 1953, he grew up in Athens, where he turned to traditional percussion from a very young age. A decisive moment in his musical formation came in 1966, when he met his teacher Mathios Balabanis, a Constantinopolitan refugee and master of the goblet drum, who initiated him deeply into the oral tradition. From his teenage years onward, he collaborated with leading Greek instrumentalists, performing in concerts and recordings and touring throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia.
He collaborated for many years with Domna Samiou, while in 1985 he became a founding member of a pioneering ensemble, with which he helped shape a new, distinctive sound rooted in Greek traditional music. He also collaborated with other multinational ensembles and created a percussion group. In parallel, he participated as a musician and composer in contemporary dance productions, in works of the National Theatre of Greece, and in multimedia projects with artists from various disciplines. He performed with most of the major instrumentalists of the Greek traditional repertoire in live performances and recordings, and he released his own albums.
From 1993 onward, he maintained his own percussion school, where he taught traditional percussion and rhythmology, also drawing on elements of Orff’s music-education approach, while organising numerous seminars in Greece and abroad. He is regarded as one of the most important exponents and teachers of Greek traditional percussion, with a decisive contribution to its dissemination and development.
