Paul Paccione is Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Western Illinois University, Macomb. He holds degrees from the Mannes College of Music, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Iowa, where he received the PhD in 1983. He joined the faculty at Western Illinois University in 1984. During his teaching career at Western, he has received six Faculty Excellence Awards. He received the 1988 Outstanding Teacher and 2012 Creative Achievement Award in the College of Fine Arts. He was named Western Illinois University's Distinguished Faculty Lecturer for 2002. He is co-founder and co-director of Western's annual New Music Festival, now in its twenty-second year.

Paul Paccione is an active composer whose works are widely and frequently performed, both nationally and internationally. He is a member of the American Composers Alliance. Frog Peak Music publishes his music. In 2010 New World Records released a c.d. recording devoted entirely to his music, titled, "Our Beauties Are Not Ours." Additional recordings of his music are available on the Frog Peak and Capstone labels. He has lectured and written numerous articles on various aspects of modern music and particularly on the interplay of cultural conditions and compositional thought in the 20th and 21st centuries. His writings on music have appeared in Perspectives of New Music, ex tempore, College Music Symposium, American Music, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and New World Records. He is a pre-concert lecturer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.