Jan Bach is one of those fortunate "university" composers whose works, through their many performances, have extended far beyond the borders of his campus to reach an international audience. An Illinois native, he studied at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, receiving the Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition in 1971. From 1966 until his "final" retirement in the fall of 2004, he taught theory and composition courses at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, sixty-five miles west of Chicago, where, in 1982, he was awarded one of the university's first eight prestigious Presidential Research Professorship grants. A performer on piano and French horn, his composition teachers have included Roberto Gerhard, Aaron Copland, Kenneth Gaburo, Robert Kelly, and Thea Musgrave. He enjoys writing music on commission, particularly if it is for a combination of performing forces for which he has not yet written. He is the recipient of countless commissions, grants, recordings and publications. Jan Bach is a composer member of Broadcast Music, Inc., New York.

Dr. Jan Bach is the recipient of countless grants, awards and commissions, achieving international recognition through professional performances of his music, his publications, recordings and mini-residencies. Six times he has been recommended for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.