Playing and teaching organ is Jan-Piet's foremost professional activity.  He is Organist-in-Residence and professor for organ and chamber music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College/CUNY, where he performs and teaches on the Maynard-Walker Memorial Organ (Gene Bedient, 1991, III/35). 

As a concert organist, JP has performed at the world-famous Christiaan Müller organ in St. Bavo’s, Haarlem, the Netherlands; the National Cathedral in Washington DC; the Kapella in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Smetana Hall in Prague, Czech Republic; and on many other organs in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Japan.  He has made a large number of studio and live recordings for Dutch radio, including the first performance in the Netherlands of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Kantata. 

In 1997, JP won the Grand Prix Bach de Lausanne as well as the Audience Prize at the International Bach Competition in Lausanne, Switzerland.  He was also a prize winner/finalist at the Paul Hofhaymer Competition (Innsbruck 1998); the International Hendrik Andriessen Competition (Haarlem/Utrecht 1992); the Hindemith-Micheelsen Competition (Rotterdam 1996); and the Tournemire-Langlais Competition (Haarlem 1992).

JP holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance from The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, where his organ teacher was Harvard University professor Christoph Wolff, one of the world's foremost Bach scholars.  JP's dissertation, "An Early Violin Sonata by Peter Cornelius: A Critical Edition and Study," makes available for the first time an early chamber work by that important nineteenth-century composer (best known for his art songs and his opera The Barber of Baghdad).  The dissertation advisor was Allan W. Atlas. 

JP is also an Associate of the American Guild of Organists and recieved the S. Lewis Elmer Award for the highest overall score on an advanced AGO examination.  He has hosted a special benefit concert for the radio program Pipedreams at Queens College, co-sponsored by the Queens AGO chapter.  For the Westchester AGO chapter, he has presented a hands- and feet-on introduction to the pipe organ for children and adults.

JP has premiered organ works by Anton de Beer, Leo Kraft, Edward Smaldone (A Certain Slant of Light), Jan Valkestijn, and Lucas Vis.  As a concerto soloist, he has performed Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 7, the Organ Concerto by Francis Poulenc, In honorem Sancti Bavonis as well as the Concerto for Organ and Brass by Albert de Klerk, and the Concerto for Organ and Brass by Marius Monnikendam.

A church organist for over twenty years, JP currently serves at Emanuel Lutheran in Pleasantville, NY (Austin organ, 1968, II/14+8), where he has built a lively music program, involving singers and instrumentalists of all ages from the congregation and the community.  In June 2004, JP was chosen from some forty applicants to become Organist and Music Director at Union Temple of Brooklyn, the first Jewish congregation established in Brooklyn and all of Long Island. 

JP is also Organist-in-Residence of St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site in Mount Vernon, NY; this historic church, now a museum, houses an organ built in 1833 by the important New York builder Henry Erben (I/6) which has been preserved in its original condition (the organ can still be pumped by hand). 

As a teenager, JP developed a great interest in the sacred vocal music of J. S. Bach; and as an undergraduate student in Amsterdam, he became very interested in the art of continuo playing.  Since 2000, he has continuo organist of the Bach Choir and Players, a professional chamber choir and period-instruments ensemble that performs Bach cantatas in liturgical setting at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York City. 

JP received both the Bachelor of Music degree and the Artist Diploma/Master of Music degree in organ from the Conservatory of Amsterdam (formerly Sweelinck Conservatory), where he studied organ with Piet Kee and Ewald Kooiman and improvisation with Bernard Bartelink.  He also obtained the Bachelor of Sacred Music degree from the same institution.