Antonio Borghini was born June 25, 1977, in Milan and grew up in Rome, where he began studying music privately at age ten before continuing at the "G.B. Martini" conservatory in Bologna. He enrolled formally at the Bologna Conservatory in 1996, studying jazz double bass under bassist Ares Tavolazzi, already profiled on this site, and took masterclasses with Bruce Gertz, Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips and Wolfgang Fuchs.

In the late 1990s he joined the Bologna-based improvisers' collective Bassesfere, and by 1999 was also playing in guitarist Domenico Caliri's CAL Trio. In 2003 he began what became a two-decade collaboration with cellist Tristan Honsinger, first in the group Small Talk; the partnership ran through Tristan Honsinger's Hopscotch, whose Cloud Reading Society (2021, Umlaut Records/Topsi Series) credits Borghini on double bass and as producer, until Honsinger's death in August 2023.

Between 2004 and 2006 Borghini toured across Europe with a run of internationally staffed projects: the Domino Quartet, with South African-Dutch reedist Sean Bergin, trombonist Gianluca Petrella and American drummer Hamid Drake, whose Radio 3 Sessions (2005, AUAND) is Discogs-confirmed with Borghini on double bass alongside Petrella; and a trio and quartet with American saxophonist David Murray, a credit named in Borghini's own biography but not independently matched to a specific Discogs release in this build (see notes.md). In the same stretch he joined the Anthony Braxton Quartet, captured on Standards (Brussels) 2006 (released 2008, Amirani Records) with drummer Cristiano Calcagnile and pianist Alessandro Giachero, played bass in Lawrence "Butch" Morris's large-ensemble Conduction® system on Conduction® / Induction (2007, Rai Trade) alongside drummer Tyshawn Sorey and vibraphonist Pasquale Mirra, and in 2008 recorded with Danish-Congolese saxophonist John Tchicai in the Open Orchestra on The Spiritual Man (Terre Sommerse).

Borghini relocated to Berlin in 2009 and has been based there since, building a career mostly inside collectively run improvising groups rather than a single fixed working band. Der Lange Schatten, a trio with clarinetist Michael Thieke and pianist Håvard Wiik, released its self-titled debut in 2014 on the trio's own Lost Opportunities imprint and Concurrences in 2018 on Trouble in the East Records. Die Hochstapler, a quartet with alto saxophonist Pierre Borel, trumpeter Louis Laurain and drummer Hannes Lingens, built its debut The Braxtornette Project (2013, Umlaut Records) around compositions by Anthony Braxton and Ornette Coleman, followed by Play(s) the Music of Alvin P. Buckley (2015), The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog (2018), and the two-album set Within / Beauty Lies (2022), recorded during a residency at Berlin's Au Topsi Pohl. With Borel again and drummer Christian Lillinger, the trio Schnell used the bebop tradition as a jumping-off point on Live at Sowieso (2018, Clean Feed Records), recorded live in Berlin in 2017. Borghini also plays double bass and occasional voice in Hook, Line and Sinker, a music-theater quartet with Honsinger, saxophonist/clarinetist Tobias Delius and trumpeter Axel Dörner that grew out of a 2010 concert at Berlin's Miss Hecker club, releasing a self-titled DVD in 2017 and the studio album Fishy Business (2019, Relative Pitch Records). More recently he has recorded with the Christian Marien Quartett (How Long Is Now, 2024, MarMade Records, with Delius and guitarist Jasper Stadhouders) and appeared in vibraphonist Christopher Dell's conduction-based large-ensemble project Das Arbeitende Konzert / The Working Concert (2016, Edition Niehler Werft).

As a leader in his own name, Borghini formed the Berlin sextet Banquet of Consequences with Borel (alto saxophone), Delius (tenor saxophone, clarinet), cellist Anıl Eraslan, pianist Rieko Okuda and drummer Steve Heather. Its debut, Banquet of Consequences (2023, We Insist! Records), recorded at Studio Zentrifuge in Berlin and reviewed by All About Jazz, works Charles Mingus's example together with Dutch, Italian and South African jazz reference points across a set that alternates fully improvised numbered "Dialogues" with through-composed pieces. The same sextet's second album, Resta Chi Va (2025, We Insist! Records), is dedicated to the memory of Honsinger and of Italian pianist Stefano De Bonis, with whom Borghini had played (on electric bass, per press sources) in the Trio De Bonis from 2008 - a credit that does not appear on Borghini's own Discogs entry and is recorded here as press-sourced rather than discography-verified.

Borghini's playing sits inside the European free-improvisation and free-jazz scene rather than any single home-grown Italian school: nearly every one of his releases carries "Jazz" as its Discogs-listed genre, with "Free Improvisation," "Free Jazz," "Avant-Garde Jazz" and "Contemporary Jazz" as the recurring style tags across the catalog. His working method leans on small, self-composing collectives - Der Lange Schatten, Die Hochstapler, Schnell - built around shared writing and real-time interplay rather than a leader-and-sidemen structure, an approach that traces back to his early-2000s work alongside Tristan Honsinger and to the conduction systems of Butch Morris and the structured-improvisation quartet of Anthony Braxton that he passed through mid-career. Hook, Line and Sinker pushes that collectivism furthest, folding spoken text, cabaret and physical performance into the improvising itself. His own Banquet of Consequences project is, by comparison, more explicitly composed and referential, built around Charles Mingus's model of writing tightly plotted material that still leaves room for the group to come apart and reassemble inside it.