Jan Bach

b. 1937 - d. 2020

Jan Bach first started writing music at the age of 5 and received his first composition award from BMI at the age of 19. He continued composing until he died at the age of 82.

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 to 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 included Roberto Gerhard, Aaron Copland, Kenneth Gaburo, Robert Kelly, and Thea Musgrave.

Jan Bach’s music has been and continues to be performed and recorded worldwide. His rhythms, melodic placement, use of fugues and especially his fondness of writing for the underdog performer (viola, tuba, bassoon, harp, steelpan, euphonium, to name a few), made Bach a key contributor to 20th Century Post-Modern Composition. He was the recipient of countless commissions, grants, recordings and publications. Jan Bach’s Estate is a composer member of Broadcast Music, Inc., New York.