Jan Joseph Chiapusso was born in Gemou, near Semarang,[1] in Java in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.
[4] He arrived in the United States in 1916, where he gave concerts and was Professor of Piano (1916–1917) at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia.
[4] In these talks he would illustrate the influence of the gamelan and other types of Javanese music on European composers, drawing on his own experiences and his family's knowledge.
[5] While Chiapusso was at the Bush Conservatory, he taught Rosalyn Tureck from 1929 to 1931, and was the first of her teachers to recognise her special gifts for playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Extant recordings available on CD include: He also published his own piano arrangements of some Bach organ and solo cello works.