Alessandro Sgobbio was born in 1982 in Martina Franca, in Puglia's Itria Valley, and grew up in nearby Crispiano. He began piano at five, following his father, also a musician, and took his first training in Puglia and Taranto before moving north to continue his studies at the Conservatorio "Arrigo Boito" in Parma. There he earned a piano diploma and, with highest honors (110 e lode), a two-year jazz specialization degree under bassist and composer Roberto Bonati, studying jazz piano with Alberto Tacchini and Carlo Morena, composition with Giorgio Tosi, and classical piano with Roberto Cappello. He separately holds an honors degree in Literature and Philosophy. His training continued outward from Parma: Berklee clinics at Umbria Jazz in 2001, the Siena Jazz seminars in 2007, masterclasses with John Taylor and Misha Alperin, and a further Master's degree at the Norges Musikkhøgskole (Norwegian Academy of Music) in Oslo.

Prizes followed through the early 2010s: second place at the Luca Flores Competition in Florence and selection for the Concours de piano jazz Martial Solal in Paris, both in 2010; first prize at the Umbria Jazz Contest; and first prize at Padova's Porsche Carrarese competition. Musica Jazz magazine's TopJazz critics' referendum first flagged him as an emerging Italian talent in 2012, and placed him again in its Best New Talent poll in both 2022 and 2023.

His debut as a leader, Aforismi Protestanti (2010, Gaffe Music), is a solo-piano record with one guest: clarinetist Achille Succi, playing bass clarinet across the set. The same year, Sgobbio appeared as the credited piano soloist on "Il Bosco Di Beuys," Roberto Bonati's setting of a Giorgio Gaslini piece for baritone voice, small choir, clarinet, cello, piano and percussion, released on the various-artists tribute album Gaslini Sinfonico³ (Velut Luna). Also in 2010, together with saxophonist Emiliano Vernizzi, he formed the duo Pericopes, documented on The Double Side Vol. I - Lights and Vol. II - Shadows (2012, RAM Records) and the DVD Frames (2014, Parmafrontiere). Expanded to a quartet with drummer Nick Wight as Pericopes+1, the group released These Human Beings (2015, Alfa Music) and Legacy (2017, AUAND) before returning to the trio format for What What (2018, Unit Records) and Up (2020, Losen Records).

Sgobbio built a parallel career centered on Paris, where he leads the trio Charm - with bassist Xuan Lindenmeyer and drummer Frédéric Chapperon, documented on 2013's self-titled album - and where he co-produced Debra's Dream (2015), a session led by singer Debra Shaw with American alto saxophonist Logan Richardson, guitarist Josiah Woodson, bassist Darryl Hall and Chapperon again on drums.

His two Italian-Scandinavian ensembles followed later in the decade. Silent Fires - a quartet with vocalist Karoline Wallace, trumpeter Hilde Marie Holsen (also playing electronics) and violinist Håkon Aase - recorded its debut, Forests, at Udine's Artesuono studio in April 2018, released in December 2019 on AMP Music & Records. Hitra, a quartet with Icelandic guitarist Hilmar Jensson, bassist Jo Berger Myhre and drummer Øyvind Skarbø, released Transparence on the same Norwegian label in 2021.

Since 2022 his central project has been the Piano Music series: solo recordings for Fazioli F278 grand piano, increasingly combined with live electronics, cut at Artesuono with engineer Stefano Amerio. Piano Music (2022) and Piano Music 2 (2023) each carry nine compositions framed as dedications - Piano Music 2's include tributes to his late mentor Misha Alperin and to Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh - and Piano Music 3 followed in 2025. Jazz Journal's UK review of the first volume placed Sgobbio's playing alongside Nils Frahm and Keith Jarrett rather than the more commercial end of solo-piano minimalism; Musica Jazz reviewed the second volume on its release.

In February 2026 he released تنفُّس Breathing with Palestinian singer and actress Amal Murkus (Levantine Music), a duo record - with kanun player Firas Zreik guesting on one track - built from Palestinian, Syrian and other Arabic traditional material alongside Sgobbio's own compositions, including "Bah'ri," his tribute to his native Puglia and the Mediterranean, and Enzo Avitabile's "Canta," written for activist Vittorio Arrigoni. Across sixteen albums as leader or co-leader, Sgobbio has toured Europe, China, the United States and the UK, and continues to teach as a co-instructor in the jazz program at the Conservatorio "Arrigo Boito" in Parma, the same institution where he trained.

Sgobbio's catalogue runs on parallel tracks rather than a single working band. The Piano Music series carries his most personal, composed voice: intimate, dedication-driven solo pieces for acoustic piano, opened out gradually to live electronics used, as one reviewer put it, sparingly rather than as a genre signature - closer in spirit to Nils Frahm's and Keith Jarrett's solo work than to ambient or new-age formula. Alongside that sits a persistent ethno-jazz and cross-cultural thread, running from the 2010 debut and duo/quartet work with Emiliano Vernizzi through the Italian-Scandinavian textures of Silent Fires and Hitra to the 2026 duo with Amal Murkus, whose Arabic and Palestinian repertoire Sgobbio meets on its own terms rather than treating as decoration. A third, more chamber-scaled strand runs through Aforismi Protestanti's largely unaccompanied writing and the small, through-composed groups (Pericopes, Charm) that make up most of his working discography, favoring intimate instrumentation and dedicatory, narrative-driven titles over blowing-session repertoire.