Jody Rockmaker received his Ph.D. in Composition from Princeton University. He has studied at the Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. His principal teachers have been Erich Urbanner, Edward T. Cone, Milton Babbitt, Claudio Spies, Malcolm Peyton and Miriam Gideon.
Dr. Rockmaker is the recipient of numerous awards including a Barlow Endowment Commission, Fulbright Grant, two BMI Awards for Young Composers, an ASCAP Grant, the George Whitefield Chadwick Medal from New England Conservatory, and a National Orchestral Association Orchestral Reading Fellowship. He has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Villa Montalvo, and has been a Composition Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. He taught at Stanford University and is currently an Associate Professor at Arizona State University School of Music.