Joel Bacon is the Stewart and Sheron Golden Chair of Organ and Liturgical Studies and the Fr. Don Willette Chair of Catholic Studies at Colorado State University.

As a concert organist, his recent performances have focused on music by W. A. Mozart, Herman Berlinski, and Petr Eben, as well as works for organ and orchestra. His teaching and research are centered on topics related to Catholicism and the creative arts, especially Gregorian chant.

He has performed throughout Europe and North America, and his performances have been broadcast on Austrian Radio and Public Radio International. He has played with numerous orchestras and chamber groups, including the Borromeo String Quartet and the Canadian Brass.

He directs and teaches an annual summer course for young organists (CSU Organ Week) and has directed many Pipe Organ Encounters of the American Guild of Organists. He has taught at the Oundle International Festival (Cambridge, UK), at organ courses of the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, and at numerous other courses in the US and Canada.

He earned a Ph.D. in historical musicology through a joint degree program of Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts and the University of Vienna, with a dissertation on the use of the organ in orchestral music. In his work as a musicologist, he has lectured widely on topics related to the organ and liturgical music. Most recently, he has researched the composer Herman Berlisnki (1910–2001), whose organ concerto, “The Tetragrammaton,” he performed in a world premiere in Munich in 2019.

From 2008 to 2020 he conducted the St. John XXIII Schola Cantorum, a choir specializing in Gregorian chant. He is currently organist and artist in residence at First United Methodist Church, Fort Collins.