Cinzia Gizzi was born in Pescara, in Italy's Abruzzo region, on February 3, 1954. She began classical piano lessons at eight, and during her university years moved to Rome, where she earned a degree in Anglo-American Literature from Sapienza University. She came into the city's jazz scene between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and in the early 1980s joined the house rhythm section at Rome's Mississippi Jazz Club, accompanying a long list of visiting American musicians on their Italian dates: Johnny Griffin, Al Cohn, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Al Grey, Hal Singer, Pepper Adams, Benny Bailey, Duško Gojković, Joe Newman, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and trombonist George Masso, who would later guest on one of her own albums.

In 1988 she won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in Professional Music in 1990. While in the United States she studied privately in New York with pianist Jaki Byard and continued her training with Charlie Banacos. Back in Italy, she added a formal Piano Diploma from the Licinio Refice Conservatory in Frosinone in 1994.

In the 1995-96 academic year, Gizzi won the Jazz Chair competition at the Francesco Cilea Conservatory in Reggio Calabria, becoming the first woman to hold a jazz professorship at an Italian state conservatory. She went on to teach at the conservatories of Trieste, Messina, Catania, L'Aquila, and Latina, concluding a 27-year teaching career in November 2022 at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, where her CV remains on file.

Her recorded discography as a leader runs from Cinzia Gizzi Trio & Sextet (1991, Penta Flowers/Gemini Music Library) - a session that put a young trumpeter named Flavio Boltro and bassist Giovanni Tommaso in her sextet alongside saxophonist Piero Odorici, trombonist Rudy Migliardi, and drummer Gianni Cazzola - through Four G In Lanciano (Discogs-dated 2000, DFV), a quartet billing headed jointly with George Masso, bassist Giorgio Rosciglione, and drummer Gegè Munari. On Soul Eyes (2001, Primrose Music), the Cinzia Gizzi Trio brought in a young Stefano Di Battista on alto and soprano saxophone alongside Rosciglione and Munari; a Discogs-confirmed credit places the same pairing together again on Sergio Coppotelli Quintet's The Best Live (Splasc(h) Records, Discogs-dated 2000), with Gizzi on piano and Di Battista on soprano and alto saxophone. She returned to a trio format for Tribute to Bud Powell (Discogs-dated 2006, Lush Tales), with bassist Gigi Rossi and drummer Alessandro Marzi named on the album's own cover art, and for Be Bop Club (2007, Primrose Music), again with Munari and Rosciglione.

Alongside her own leader dates, Gizzi built a parallel career as a broadcaster for RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, combining performance with authorship and hosting duties. Between 1988 and 1990 she wrote and hosted three monographic radio cycles on Radio Rai: Breve storia del piano jazz (1988, ten episodes), Storia degli arrangiatori (1989, sixteen episodes), and I pianisti hard bop (1990, twelve episodes), alongside contributions to programs including Radiounoserata Jazz (1988-1991, 1993) and, later, La stanza della musica on Radio Rai 3 (2005). Her television appearances on RAI networks date back to 1981, including as soloist and bandleader on Italia Mia (Rai 1, 1986) and Sanremo Jazz Image (Rai 1, 1992).

Since 2003 she has combined performing with arranging and conducting: she led the Tartini Conservatory Jazz Band at Trieste's Teatro Verdi that year, oversaw productions with the Corelli Jazz Ensemble at Messina's Teatro Vittorio Emanuele II between 2006 and 2009, and in 2006 arranged Claude Bolling's Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio for the Tartini String Orchestra in Latina. She collaborated with Vatican Radio and appeared at the Mantova Jazz Festival in 2007, conducted the ONJC Jazz Band in Milan in 2008, and in 2022 returned to the podium at Santa Cecilia's Academic Hall to conduct Claus Ogerman's Symbiosis.

Gizzi is also a published jazz historian: she has directed the Il Suono e il Tempo music-study series for the publisher Aracne since 2016, and is the author of Arrangiatori Jazz (2016) and Arrangiatori Jazz II (2020), later issued in English as Jazz Arrangers II (2024). In 2017 she received the Career Award at the 28th Profilo Donna International Award in Modena. Her festival record spans four decades, from the Roma Jazz Festival (1985) and a Jon Faddis-led Fano Jazz Festival quintet (1993) through a 1999 Pescara Jazz Festival duo with Giovanni Tommaso, a 2002 booking at Mexico City's Euro Jazz Festival, and, more recently, solo recitals at Rome's Accademia Filarmonica Romana (2011, 2017), appearances at Casa del Jazz (2012, 2024), and a guest slot at Rome's JazzIdea Festival in 2023.

Gizzi's playing sits in the straight-ahead, bebop-descended piano tradition she absorbed directly: accompanying touring American musicians at Rome's Mississippi Jazz Club as a young player in the early 1980s, then refining it formally at Berklee and in private study with Jaki Byard, himself a link to Charles Mingus and to the bebop generation. Tribute to Bud Powell (2006) makes that lineage explicit by name; Discogs tags her other trio and sextet dates Hard Bop, Cool Jazz, and Modal, consistent with a career built on small-group postwar jazz piano rather than fusion or the avant-garde. Her second, parallel identity as an academic - the first woman to hold a jazz chair at an Italian state conservatory, and a published historian of jazz arranging - runs alongside rather than instead of her performing career, closer in shape to a small number of other Italian jazz musicians in this campaign who have combined a conservatory post with an active discography than to a purely academic profile.