Jan Meßtorff was born in Bremen in 1988. He studied composition with Prof. Younghi Pagh-Paan and Prof. Jörg Birkenkötter, electroacoustic composition with Prof. Kilian Schwoon and Joachim Heintz, and music theory with Prof. Dr. Hubert Moßburger at the Bremen University of the Arts and with Univ.-Prof. Dr. habil. Birger Petersen and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Immanuel Ott at the Mainz School of Music. Doctoral thesis on Hugo Riemann and harmonic dualism. He is currently an artistic associate at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre.

He has held teaching positions at the Bremen University of the Arts, the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music Dresden, the Institute for Church Music and Musicology at the University of Greifswald, the Mainz School of Music, and the Institute of Music at the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences.