Tchavolo Schmitt was born in Paris in October 1954, in the Belleville district, into a Sinti family with roots in Alsace, and is a guitarist in the manouche tradition of gypsy jazz. His mother started him on the guitar when he was six, and his father played the violin. The family moved to Strasbourg in 1965. As a young player he was one of the regulars among the manouche guitarists who gathered at the cafés of the Porte de Montreuil and at the Chope des Puces in Saint-Ouen, two Paris meeting places for the style, and his playing was known well beyond Alsace before he had recorded under his own name.

He turned professional in 1979. That year he joined the Hot Club da Sinti, with the violinist Wedeli Köhler, the guitarist Schmehling Lehmann and the bassist Jani Lehmann. Its one LP, Wonderful, was recorded in Stuttgart on January 13 and 14, 1981 and issued on Linkshändle Records, followed in 1982 by a four-track EP. His career then went quiet for most of the 1980s. Back in Alsace, he stepped away from the professional circuit for a time, though he kept playing with family: his brother Gogo Berbedes and his cousins Mandino Reinhardt, Sony Reinhardt, Hono Winterstein and Dorado Schmitt, himself a leading gypsy jazz guitarist whose sons Samson, Bronson and Amati are guitarists too.

His return to wider notice came in the early 1990s. He appeared in Tony Gatlif's film Latcho Drom, a documentary about Romani music, and in February and March 1993 he recorded Swing 93 for Djaz Records with Gypsy Reunion, a group of Dorado Schmitt, Patrick Saussois, Hono Winterstein and Gino Reinhardt that also played the Gipsy Swing Festival in Angers that year.

His first album under his own name, Alors? ... Voilà!, came out on Iris Music in 2000, made with the guitarist Romane as producer and rhythm guitarist and with the violinist Florin Niculescu, the accordionist Ionică Minune and the bassist Gilles Naturel. Miri Familia (Djaz Records), recorded in December 2000 with Mandino Reinhardt, Sony Reinhardt, Hono Winterstein and Gogo Berbedes on guitars, followed in 2001. In 2002 Gatlif cast him in Swing as Miraldo, a guitar teacher, a part inspired by Schmitt himself, and the film brought him to a general audience. In 2004 he made Mémoires, a tribute to Django Reinhardt, with the guitarist Angelo Debarre. Three albums for Le Chant du Monde, a label of the Harmonia Mundi group, came next: Loutcha (2005), Seven Gypsy Nights (2007) and Live in Paris (2010), the last recorded at the Alhambra in Paris on September 20, 2008, with the violinist Costel Nitescu and the bassist Claudius Dupont. On Seven Gypsy Nights the cimbalom player Giani Lincan joined the quartet on four pieces.

From 2013 he worked with the guitarist Samy Daussat on Nouvelle Vague, an album of French yé-yé and early rock and roll songs reworked in the manouche idiom, and in 2014 the Tchavolo Schmitt Quartet, with Daussat, Dupont and the singer Marie-Christine Brambilla, recorded Mélancolies d'un soir. A long gap followed. Miri Chterna, a trio record with the guitarist Julien Cattiaux and the bassist Edouard Pennes, was released on vinyl by Mambo Productions in July 2022. It was followed by Rencontre in Italia (2024), a collaboration with the Italian guitarist and singer Maurizio Geri, and Django Celebration #02 (Label Ouest, 2025), a trio record with the guitarist Fanou Torracinta and the bassist William Brunard.

He remains active in Paris. He has led trio nights at the Duc des Lombards every year since 2022, played a Django Reinhardt tribute at the Sunset with Torracinta and Brunard on December 26 and 27, 2025, and was listed at the Duc des Lombards for October 16 and 17, 2026. He is also one of the guitarists in the large ensemble on the Live Jazz à Vienne DVD released in 2002, alongside Biréli Lagrène, Sylvain Luc and Richard Galliano.

Schmitt plays the rhythmic, percussive manouche guitar that descends from Django Reinhardt, with a hard right-hand attack, fast and fluent phrasing and the "pompe" accompaniment pattern of the style. He is often described as one of Reinhardt's heirs, a label French sources say he declines out of reverence for Django. His repertoire mixes Reinhardt's own pieces ("Nuages", "Minor Swing", "Swing 48", "Manoir de mes réves") with American standards such as "It Had to Be You", "Them There Eyes", "Lady Be Good" and "Sweet Georgia Brown", French songs like "Seul ce soir" and "Ménilmontant", and his own waltzes and blues, among them "Valse à Dora", "Valse à Tchavolo" and "Tchavolo Blues". He usually works in the classic small-group format of lead guitar, rhythm guitars, bass and sometimes violin. One French review of his live record singles out its warmth, and French concert listings describe a reputation that reaches Japan and the major gypsy jazz festivals. His recorded work is manouche jazz, swing-era repertoire and original pieces in that style, rather than Romani or Sinti folk music, even though he appeared in films such as Latcho Drom that document that wider tradition.