Aldo Bassi was born in Rome on January 29, 1962, into a family with music running through it on his grandparents' side; he trained classically before switching to jazz as a teenager. He earned a trumpet diploma at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, a classical trumpet diploma at the Conservatorio di Campobasso, and jazz diplomas from the conservatories of Frosinone and Campobasso. His first professional home was Rome's big-band scene: the Alberto Corvini Big Band, the S. Louis Big Band directed by drummer Bruno Biriaco, and the Testaccio Jazz Orchestra.

In 1992 Bassi co-founded the Bassi-Giuliani Quintet with alto and soprano saxophonist Rosario Giuliani, four years before Giuliani's Massimo Urbani Prize launched him toward an international career. The quintet recorded L'Incontro (Coccinella, 1996) and appeared at the Jazz & Image Festival; the album has since become a scarce, sought-after item among Italian jazz collectors.

In 1998 Bassi formed a group under his own name for the first time, the Aldo Bassi Quartet, built around his original compositions. Its debut, Distanze (Philology, 1999; reissued on Jazzhead in 2003), used an unusual lineup for a "quartet" billing: Bassi on flugelhorn alongside Mauro Panzieri's oboe, Enrico Bracco's guitar, Stefano Cantarano's double bass and Alessandro Svampa's drums, with no piano at all. The quartet's second album, Muah! (ConcertOne, recorded 2001, released 2004), moved to a more conventional postbop lineup and brought in two outside names: American tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza and accordionist Antonello Salis, alongside pianist Pino Iodice, bassist Gianluca Renzi and drummer Pietro Iodice.

Also in 2000, Bassi began what became one of his longest-running musical partnerships, the Media Res ensemble with saxophonist Gianni Savelli, documented on record across Que la Fete Commence (Alfa Music, 2009) and Magellano (Neuklang, 2015). In 2004 he joined the Orchestra Nazionale Italiana di Jazz (Italy's National Jazz Orchestra), and the following year became a member of the Parco della Musica Jazz Orchestra at Rome's Auditorium under Maurizio Giammarco's direction. 2005 also brought a new duo with pianist Alessandro Bravo, the Bassi-Bravo Duo, whose album Sirio (Effemusic, 2007) is a trumpet-and-piano session. Bravo stayed on for the Aldo Bassi Quartet's third and final studio album, New Research (2010), alongside bassist Stefano Nunzi and drummer Alessandro Marzi; critics at the time noted a growth in Bassi's writing and a deeper compositional maturity compared to the earlier records.

In 2012 Bassi released Solo, an unaccompanied trumpet album. "I wanted to immerse myself in an unexplored world, solely with trumpet," he said of the project; "playing without rhythmic and harmonic references is like walking with closed eyes." His final recording project, formed in 2013, was the electronics-and-improvisation-leaning Metal Jazz Trio with bassist Pierpaolo Ranieri and drummer Dario Panza, documented on the album Three Notes.

Alongside his own bands, Bassi worked across four decades as a sideman and session player, contributing to film and television scores for Ennio Morricone, Armando Trovajoli, Manuel De Sica, Renato Serio and Piero Piccioni, and to broadcast work for RAI and Mediaset. He taught for years at Lazio's I.A.L.S. professional courses, the S. Louis school and the Roman Academy of Music in Rome, then held a conservatory post from 2004 at Frosinone (trumpet, jazz trombone and jazz ensemble music) before later teaching at the Benevento Conservatory; he also led masterclasses at the Tuscia in Jazz and La Spezia Jazz festivals and taught at the 52 Jazz Campus in 2018. He directed the S. Louis Big Band and Rome's Daila Big Band.

Bassi died in Latina on May 10, 2020, at 58, after more than a year fighting an incurable illness. His death was widely mourned in the Italian jazz press, with obituaries running in ANSA, Il Messaggero, Affaritaliani, Rockol, Fanpage, Latina Oggi and Latina Today, among others; colleagues and family held a shared digital vigil in the days that followed. He was survived by his companion, Cristiana Piraino, and his two daughters, Michela and Nina.

Bassi's playing came up through Rome's big-band and orchestra circuit before turning toward small-group original writing, and that mainstream, hard-bop-rooted foundation runs under everything he did as a leader. Distanze is the outlier in his catalogue: dropping the piano in favor of oboe and guitar gives it a chamber-jazz color unlike the harder-swinging postbop quartet-plus-guest-horn approach of Muah!, which leans on Rick Margitza's tenor saxophone the way a more conventional hard-bop date would use a second horn. Sirio and the New Research quartet, both built around pianist Alessandro Bravo, sit closer to a standard mainstream small-group sound. Solo, his unaccompanied trumpet record, and the Metal Jazz Trio, his final project, mark the two furthest departures from that mainstream base - one stripping the music down to bare melodic and harmonic invention, the other pushing toward electronics and rock-adjacent texture, as its title signals.

His parallel life as an in-demand sideman and institutional player reinforces the same picture: a nearly three-decade recurring credit with Riccardo Fassi's Tankio Band (1989 through 2017), a fifteen-year partnership with saxophonist Gianni Savelli in the Media Res ensemble, and chairs in two of Italy's flagship 2000s large jazz ensembles, the Orchestra Nazionale Italiana di Jazz and the Parco della Musica Jazz Orchestra under Maurizio Giammarco.