Jan Panis studied electronics and Sonology, performed as a jazz guitarist and organized jazz festivals. He was chief engineer for the electronic music studios at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, where he met Karlheinz Stockhausen. Apart from over twenty Stockhausen compositions being on his repertoire as a sound engineer, he developed equipment for Mixtur, Microfonie and Mantra, of which he recorded an Edison Award winning CD. He also performed in Dienstag aus Licht.

Jan is currently running a company specialised in all possible electro acoustic and computer techniques for contemporary music and has worked with many of the great orchestras and artists of this world, like the Concertgebouw Orchestra, ASKO|Schönberg, Berliner Philharmoniker, Dutch Radio Philharmonic/Chamber orchestras, John Cage, Heiner Goebbels, Oliver Knussen, John Adams, Riccardo Chailly, Simon Rattle, Reinbert de Leeuw, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, Maurizio Kagel, Peter Eötvös, and Ingo Metzmacher, all over the world.

Recent remarkable projects were the Death of Klinghoffer, the complete Varèse pieces in de Gashouder and Répons in Rotterdam and Cologne. His teaching experience includes sound reinforcement classes at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, KMT Hilversum and at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.