Yan Maresz first studied piano and percussion at the Monte Carlo Academy of Music before focusing on teaching himself the guitar. In 1983, he studied guitar with John McLaughlin (as his only student), and starting in 1989, collaborated with his former teacher on recordings such as The Promise, Time Remembered, and Thieves & poets (as a performer and orchestrator/arranger). Maresz went on to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston from 1984 to 1986, before turning to composition. In 1986, he received a grant from the Princess Grace of Monaco Foundation, allowing him to study composition with David Diamond at the Juilliard School in New York. Maresz served as an assistant teacher of music theory at the same institution from 1990 until his graduation in 1992.

From 1990 to 1991, he was associate director of Music Mobile Ensemble (based in New York). In 1993, he participated in the IRCAM Cursus (IRCAM’s composition and computer music course), allowing him further study with Tristan Murail. While at IRCAM, he composed Metallics (1995, revised in 2001), which was selected for the 1997 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers. He has received numerous accolades, including the Rossini Prize from the Institut de France/Academy of Fine Arts in 1994, the SACEM Hervé Dugardin Prize in 1995 and the SACEM Prize for Young Composers in 2006. He was a resident at Villa Medici from 1995 to 1997, at the Europaïsches Kolleg der Künste in Berlin in 2004, and at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2012.

He has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Paris Orchestra, Radio France Philharmonic, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Ensemble Intercontemporain, IRCAM, Auditorium du Louvre, the “Piano aux Jacobins” Music Festival, the Monte Carlo Ballet, Accentus Ensemble, and Percussions de Strasbourg, among other organisations. His works are regularly performed in major international music festivals.

Yan Maresz is extremely active as a pedagogue. He regularly leads masterclasses in Europe and Canada, was composer-in-residence at the Strasbourg Conservatory in 2003-04, and guest professor at McGill University in 2004-05. He taught composition to participants of the IRCAM Cursus from 2006 to 2012. Since 2006, he has taught electroacoustic composition, and from 2007 to 2012 also orchestration, at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP). Finally, in 2011, he became a professor of electroacoustic composition at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory (in the suburbs of Paris).

A CD dedicated to his works, performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain (conducted by Jonathan Nott), was released on the Accord/Musical label. He collaborated with the Monte Carlo Ballet and in-house choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot on Entrelacs in 2000 and Recto-Verso - d’une rive à l’autre in 2003. Al Segno (2000), a choreographic work commissioned by IRCAM and created in collaboration with François Raffinot, was re-worked into the concert piece Sul Segno in 2004. Maresz has been the subject of two documentary films, both from 1999: one by Judith Kele focusing on Metallics, and the other by Clara Ott on the work Festin; both were broadcast on the Arte, Muzzik, and Mezzo networks.

Other notable works in Maresz’s catalogue include the vocal work Tabula Smaragdina, premiered by Accentus in 2004 (Maresz rarely composes for voice); Network (2005) for six percussionists; Étude d’impacts for solo timpani (2006); Tutti for chamber ensemble and electronics, premiered by musikFabrik in 2013 at ManiFeste; Répliques for augmented harp and orchestra, premiered at the Maison de la Radio in Paris in 2016 by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra; and the widely-performed soundtrack for René Clair’s silent film from 1924, The Crazy Ray (Paris qui dort) (2005), of which a revised version was premiered at ManiFeste in 2021. That same year, he was invited to compose a piece, 4 études acousmatiques pour un palais social, for the Cour sonore, a meta-instrument in the Familistère from the town of Guise.