Arturo Vitale (1954 to 2024) was an Italian saxophonist, clarinetist, vibraphonist and composer, and one of the six founding members of Arti e Mestieri, the Turin band whose first two albums gave Italian progressive rock a jazz-rock edge. Published sources give no birthplace and very little about his life away from the records. Before the band existed he played with the guitarist Gigi Venegoni, the violinist Giovanni Vigliar and the bassist Marco Gallesi in a Turin group called Sogno di Archimede. In 1974 the drummer Furio Chirico, formerly of The Trip and I Ragazzi del Sole, built a new band around that nucleus and added the keyboardist Beppe Crovella, who came from a group called the Mystics. That year the six played the Re Nudo festival at Parco Lambro in Milan, with the manager Franco Mamone and Gianni Sassi of Cramps Records backing their start.

The debut album, Tilt (Immagini per un orecchio), came out on Cramps in 1974 (CRSLP 5501) and was recorded at the Chantalain Studio in Rome. Vitale is credited with soprano and baritone saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet and vibraphone, and he shares the writing credit with Venegoni on "Articolazioni," the 13-minute piece that fills most of side two. Italian Wikipedia describes the music as a blend of avant-progressive rock and fusion. Giro di valzer per domani followed in 1975 (CRSLP 5502), recorded at Fono in Rome and Milano Sound Recording in Milan, with music and words credited jointly to Venegoni, Crovella and Vitale, who adds clavinet and voice to his reeds and vibraphone. Gianfranco Gaza sang on it, and the record leans harder into jazz-rock than the debut. A single, "Valzer per domani" backed with "Saper sentire" (Cramps CRSNP 1901), carries his writing credits as well.

Away from the band he took sideman work. In 1976 he played soprano saxophone and clarinet on Canti dal Vangelo secondo Barabba, an LDC album of roughly 500 copies released on November 26, 1976, composed by Marcello Quartarone to words by boys from a Salesian youth centre in Arese, with Vigliar on violin. He also sat in with Esagono, the instrumental jazz-rock group that Marco Cimino, Gallesi and the drummer Giorgio Diaferia formed in Turin in 1975. He is a guest on its debut Vicolo (Mu Records, UM 101; Italian Wikipedia dates it 1976), playing tenor and soprano saxophone and vibraphone, and he plays saxophone on the live set Esagono recorded on February 25, 1977, which was issued thirty years later on 2.

By Quinto stato (Cramps, 1979) the band had been rebuilt around Chirico, Gallesi, the guitarist Claudio Montafia and Cimino on keyboards, with the eighteen-year-old trumpeter Flavio Boltro, who went on to a career in jazz. Vitale is credited on winds, piano and voice. He wrote "Mercato" and "Sui tetti," and on "Mercato" he is listed at the acoustic piano, on saxophone and singing. Italian Wikipedia says the album took up social alienation and arrived as the progressive era was fading, and that Venegoni appears on only one track before leaving to lead his own group. Discogs lists no credit for Vitale on the band's next two albums, Acquario (1983) and Children's Blues (1985); Italian Wikipedia describes the first as instrumental jazz-rock with frequent jazz interplay and the second as closer still to jazz.

The band re-formed in the 1990s, and Vitale was among five original members in the reunion line-up with Venegoni, Crovella, Gallesi and Cimino. After a few concerts he left and the violinist Corrado Trabuio took his place. He returned for archival and anniversary projects. Articollezione (Electromantic, 2001), a collection of early unreleased pieces, credits him on saxophones and as a writer on two tracks. Live 1974/2000 (Electromantic, 2003) preserves a 1974 concert set with him on alto and soprano saxophones and vibraphone. On Universi paralleli (Cramps, 2015) he plays soprano saxophone on "Restare immobile." In 2015 the band marked its fortieth anniversary with a concert in Japan featuring four of its original members, Chirico, Venegoni, Crovella and Vitale, with the King Crimson saxophonist Mel Collins as a guest; it was recorded for the box set Live in Japan: The Best of Italian Rock (King Records, 2017).

Vitale passed away on January 18, 2024, at the age of 69. The band announced his death in an official statement in which Chirico remembered him. On January 18, 2025, a venue in Rivoli, near Turin, held an evening of music dedicated to him.

Vitale's contribution was color more than showcase solos. Soprano and baritone saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet, vibraphone, clavinet and acoustic piano gave Arti e Mestieri a reed-and-mallet voice that most guitar-and-keyboard progressive bands of the decade lacked, and it is a large part of why the first two albums sit close to jazz-rock fusion. He was also a writer, with credits on "Articolazioni," on the Giro di valzer per domani material, and on "Mercato" and "Sui tetti."

The jazz side of the picture is documented rather than assumed. Italian Wikipedia lists jazz-rock among the band's genres and says Giro di valzer per domani put more emphasis on it. Discogs files Giro di valzer per domani, Quinto stato, Vicolo and Esagono's 2 under Jazz-Rock, and All About Jazz carries the band in its musician directory, where a reviewer calls the group Italian prog/fusion and compares its 2005 live sound to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Gentle Giant and King Crimson. Vitale made no records under his own name, and his career was spent almost entirely inside one band and its satellites. He is a fusion-era reed player and composer, not a straight-ahead jazz saxophonist, and the progressive-rock side of Arti e Mestieri is at least as large as the jazz side.