Alfonso Santimone was born in Ferrara, Italy, on 23 June 1973, and has worked since the early 1990s as a pianist, keyboardist, composer, improviser, arranger and producer. Through the 1990s he was a stable member of drummer Giulio Capiozzo's quintet, playing and recording across Italy and Europe alongside Harold Land, George Cables, Jimmy Owens, Tony Scott and Bruce Forman.

His discography, verified through the Discogs API (86 credits under his own artist entry, plus further credits carried under his groups' own listings), runs from a 2001 appearance on the Ferrara literary-music project F.RR.R. - Sguardi Consonanti (Endas Ferrara) to a 2025 session with the Mauro Negri Quartet. Its most internationally visible single credit is piano and keyboards on "Hasta Siempre Comandante," a Carlos Puebla cover on Robert Wyatt's Comicopera (2007, Domino) - confirmed at the track level in Discogs' own release data.

As a leader and co-leader, his catalog runs from the free-improvised electronic duo Klan.G (with bassist Alessandro Fedrigo, Resonance Surfers, 2009, nBn Records) to Ecce Combo (2010, El Gallo Rojo), credited to Alfonso Santimone Laser Pigs, a quintet with saxophonist Piero Bittolo Bon, bassist Danilo Gallo and drummer Zeno De Rossi, and more recent work: 4 Days (2022, Kopaton Records), a four-day live-composition-and-painting collaboration in Zagreb with brothers Alen and Nenad Sinkauz, and Live In Lugano (2024, The Flying Robert Music) with trumpeter Andrea Ayassot. He co-founded the Italian musicians' collective and record label El Gallo Rojo, whose roster runs through much of his sideman work as well - Zeno De Rossi Shtik (Me'or 'Einayim, 2007; The Manne I Love!, 2010), Falsopiano, Standhard3io, and the free-improvising quartet behind The Crypt: Act I / The Bisiakistan Renegades (2011, Punto Rojo) with Piero Bittolo Bon, pianist Giorgio Pacorig and bassist Danilo Gallo.

He is also a regular member of two other Italian bandleaders' working groups, both confirmed at the Discogs personnel-credit level: drummer Roberto Gatto's perfecTrio, on electric piano and live electronics on Starship for Lovers (2014, Parco della Musica Records) alongside bassist Pierpaolo Ranieri; and trombonist Gianluca Petrella's Cosmic Band, on Fender Rhodes, Korg MS-10 synthesizer and laptop electronics across both of the band's studio albums, Coming Tomorrow - Part One (2009) and Part Two (2012, both Spacebone Records). He also co-wrote "Lynch," one track on La Giostra (2025, Hora Records), the album the instrumental trio Guano Padano - guitarist Alessandro Stefana, bassist Danilo Gallo and drummer Zeno De Rossi - recorded together with trumpeter Enrico Rava.

More recently, he has recorded with reedist Enzo Favata's Glocal Report (Live In Hong Kong, 2020) and, as pianist and co-arranger, on Favata's Os Caminhos De Garibaldi (2024, Caligola), a session that also carries trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini, trumpeter Flavio Davanzo and bassist Danilo Gallo.

Alongside his own playing, Santimone has worked as a producer: he produced singer Patrizia Laquidara's Il Canto dell'Anguana (Hotel Rif), winner of the Targa Tenco 2011 for best album in an Italian dialect, and mixed her later C'è Qui Qualcosa Che Ti Riguarda. He has won the JazzIT Awards magazine referendum for best Italian jazz keyboardist four years running, and the 2011 Trofeo InSound in the keyboards/electronics category. Some of his electronic reworkings of Arnold Schoenberg's music are archived, at the Arnold Schoenberg Center (Vienna)'s own request, in the Center's audio collection.

He teaches jazz piano and ensemble playing at the Siena Jazz University (Accademia Nazionale del Jazz) since 2016, composition and arranging for pop/rock at the Conservatorio "L. Marenzio" in Brescia since 2019, and jazz piano at the Conservatorio "L. Campiani" in Mantova since 2022.

Santimone's catalog runs two practices that regularly cross. One is acoustic jazz and free improvisation - Zeno De Rossi Shtik, The Crypt, Falsopiano, and his work with Enzo Favata and Piero Bittolo Bon - built on piano and small-ensemble interplay and tagged "Free Improvisation" in Discogs' own genre data for Ecce Combo. The other is an electronic-improvisation practice built around vintage analog gear - the Korg MS-10 synthesizer heard on the Gianluca Petrella Cosmic Band records, and the laptop/live-electronics rig at the center of Klan.G and the 4 Days project - that connects him to Italy's acid jazz and nu jazz scenes; he appears on several Irma Records compilations built around exactly those tags, It's a Groovy Thing! The Amazing Jazz Funk Organ Sound and Acid Jazz & Funky Grooves. Across both practices, his own management copy describes him as "protean" and "adventurous," a pianist whose touch carries "a dark and visionary taste" even as he moves between free jazz, groove-based soul-jazz, and studio-built electronic composition.