Marco Cimino is a Turin keyboardist, cellist and flutist who has worked in the city's jazz-rock and progressive scene since the mid-1970s: as a founding member and principal composer of the band Esagono, as the keyboardist on Arti & Mestieri's 1979 album Quinto Stato, and later as the leader of the fusion group Freelance. His birth date and birthplace are not given in the sources checked. Alongside the band work he has been a record producer, engineer and library-music writer, so his catalogue is a crossover one, with a jazz-rock and fusion core inside a much wider body of studio credits.

Italian Wikipedia places him in two Turin progressive-rock groups, Zauber and Errata Corrige, before Esagono. Errata Corrige's Siegfried, il drago e altre storie (1976) lists four members sharing piano, synthesizers, organ, cello, flute, drums, bass and guitars, Cimino among them, and he is the composer of every track, a co-producer and the keyboardist, cellist and flutist on the group's later Mappamondo (Mellow Records, 1992). Discogs files both as progressive rock rather than jazz.

Esagono was formed in Turin in 1975 by Cimino, the bassist Marco Gallesi, who came from Arti & Mestieri, and the drummer Giorgio Diaferia, who came from a group called Combo Jazz. Their only album of the decade, Vicolo, was issued on the Mu label (catalog UM 101); Italian Wikipedia and Progarchives date it 1976, while Discogs dates its copy of the LP 1978. It is an entirely instrumental record, and Italian Wikipedia says it recalls Weather Report and the Italian jazz-rock group Perigeo. Cimino played piano, synthesizer, cello, flute and voice, produced the record, and is credited on the sleeve as composer of "Serpente piumato," "Diatomea" and "Maya" and co-composer, with Gallesi, of "Araba Fenice." Aldo Rindone shared the keyboard chair, and the Arti & Mestieri players Gigi Venegoni (guitar), Arturo Vitale (saxophones, vibraphone) and Giovanni Vigliar (violin) appeared as guests, with Claudio Montafia, Gianni Cinti and Marco Astarita also credited as guests. The sleeve credits Venegoni and Arturo Romano as the sound engineers.

In 1979 he was the keyboardist on Arti & Mestieri's Quinto Stato (Cramps Records, 5205 505), where Discogs credits him with electric piano, clavinet and the Arp Odyssey, Arp 2600 and Moog synthesizers, as producer, as composer of at least two pieces and with bass on one. It was the band's third album, usually filed under Italian progressive rock but tagged as jazz-rock on this record by Discogs, and it also featured the trumpeter Flavio Boltro. That same year he produced the electronic album Mirage by Francesco Cabiati, also on Mu. He returned for Arti & Mestieri's 1990s reunion, and Discogs credits his keyboards on Murales (Electromantic Music, 2000), a synthesizer part on Articollezione (2001), and keyboards on Furio Chirico's Furiosamente (Electromantic Music, 2001) beside Gallesi, Venegoni and Beppe Crovella. He also co-wrote and played keyboards on Venegoni & Co.'s Nocturne (Dynamo Sound Records, 1989), which Discogs tags as fusion and smooth jazz.

According to Italian Wikipedia, Esagono moved toward more jazz-oriented music in the early 1980s, adding Boltro on trumpet, Claudio Bonadè on saxophone, Enrico Cresci on guitar and voice, and Massimo Artiglia on piano, and after an intense period of live work the group broke up, whereupon Cimino founded Freelance. In the same decade Discogs credits him as producer or co-producer on a run of Italian dance and Italo disco records from 1983 to 1987, among them releases by Toon Toon Cha!, Colors and Avantgarde. In later years he is credited with writing and producing for the Turin library label Primrose Music, including the orchestral Pop Opera (2001) with Venegoni and the conductor Mauro Bouvet, the dance album 2 Night (2007) with the singer Arthur Miles, and the compilation Sofatime (2003). He has mixing credits on several Felmay world-music albums of Indian and Javanese music from 2008 to 2010, and is credited as engineer on the double album Work in Regress (2013) by the 720° Quintet with the Art Ensemble of Chicago drummer Famoudou Don Moye, which Discogs files under free jazz.

Esagono came back in 2002 with a CD reissue of Vicolo on Electromantic Music. Esagono 2 (Electromantic Music, 2007) paired two new studio tracks with a live set recorded on February 25, 1977, and Cimino is credited on electric piano, synthesizer and as producer. Apocalypso followed in 2008 and Wine Notes in 2013. Italian Wikipedia records a series of concerts in Tokyo in 2010 and a 2013 newspaper piece on the band's popularity in Japan, and Solid Records issued remastered Japanese CD editions of Vicolo, Wine Notes, Dylanology and Apocalypso in 2022. Dylanology, a set of Bob Dylan songs with three vocalists, is dated 2018 by a biography of Diaferia on Jazzitalia, and Discogs credits Cimino on piano and Boltro on trumpet. Italian Wikipedia lists the band's current lineup as Cimino on keyboards, flute and voice, Iacopo Albini on saxophone, Enrico Degani on guitar, Michele Anelli on double bass and Diaferia on drums.

Freelance, the project he founded after Esagono's first breakup, made Mazurkazen (Electromantic Music, ARTS 9008, 2003), which Discogs tags as fusion and contemporary jazz. Cimino produced it and played keyboards, sampler and voice, with the saxophonists Diego Borotti and Dave Liebman and Boltro on trumpet and flugelhorn among the credited players, and Crovella as executive producer. A second Freelance album, Organized Crime, appeared on Zen Factory Records in 2024. It is a set of songs by Sting and the Police, with Cimino on keyboards and the trumpeters Boltro and Fabrizio Bosso among the credited players.

Cimino is a keyboardist and composer first, with the cello and flute as secondary voices, and his jazz-side work is concentrated in electric, band-oriented fusion: the instrumental jazz-rock of Vicolo, the Arp and Moog keyboards on Quinto Stato, and the horn-led fusion of the Freelance and later Esagono records. Italian Wikipedia likens the first Esagono album to Weather Report and Perigeo, and it describes the early 1980s lineup as a turn toward a more jazz-minded sound. Discogs tags Vicolo, Esagono 2 and Apocalypso as jazz-rock or fusion and Mazurkazen as fusion and contemporary jazz.

This is a crossover profile and the jazz side is only part of the record. His Errata Corrige albums are progressive rock, Arti & Mestieri is usually classed as progressive rock with jazz-rock elements, and much of his credited studio work from the 1980s onward is Italo disco production, library music, dance records and mixing for world-music labels. What links the jazz-side projects is a Turin circle of players who recur across them: Gallesi, Diaferia, Venegoni, Vitale and Crovella, with the trumpeter Flavio Boltro as the best-known jazz musician among his later collaborators.