Daniele Sorrentino was born in Naples on November 23, 1980 - the day of the Irpinia earthquake, one of Italy's deadliest, which struck the region that evening. He comes from a musical family: his father Tony Sorrentino is a pianist and bandleader who led the Teatro Sannazaro orchestra in Naples, his grandfather played mandolin, and an uncle played keyboards. Sorrentino began on piano and violin at age four, returned to violin lessons at twelve for four more years, and in 1996, still a teenager, performed with his father's orchestra at the Sannazaro. The turn to bass came after he saw a Herbie Hancock concert featuring Dave Holland; he took up double bass and jazz, studying with Gianluigi Goglia and Dino Massa and taking ensemble courses with Michele di Martino.

His jazz career began around 1997. In 2000 he formed the Sorrentino Quartet with his brother Massimo on guitar, pianist Andrea Rea, and drummer Elio Coppola - the same three musicians who would remain his closest working partners for the next two decades, later regrouping as the piano trios Andrea Rea Trio and Dea Trio once the quartet's guitar chair fell away. Early recognition followed: the Sorrentino Quartet won the Premio Petrucciani competition, with Sorrentino singled out for his soloing, and in July 2004 he took first prize in the emerging-artist category at the Baronissi Jazz competition. The clearest marker of his arrival came in 2007, when he won the "Jimmy Woode" award for best double bassist (and his group took best-group honors) at the Tuscia in Jazz festival, judged by a jury that included drummer Bobby Durham, saxophonist Benny Golson and bassist Buster Williams.

The Rea/Sorrentino/Coppola trio eventually recorded under both names: as the Andrea Rea Trio on Arioso (2014, Abeat Records, with Stefano Costanzo on drums) and Impasse (2016, Losen Records, with Marcello De Leonardo on drums), and as Dea Trio - the name spelling out Daniele, Elio and Andrea - on Secret Love (2016, Itinera), with Coppola back on drums. Sorrentino also plays bass and shares a composing credit with his brother on two of Massimo Sorrentino's own leader albums, La notte dei tempi viventi (2006, Comar 23) and Intorno al Futuro (2013, Comar 23).

Sorrentino's other recorded work as a sideman runs across a wide circle of Italian jazz projects, confirmed at the Discogs credit level: the folk-jazz group Lulú Swing's Kummé (2007); vocalist Valeria Frontone's Metamusica (2013); drummer Stefano Costanzo's Tricatiempo (2013, AUAND), alongside trumpeter Luca Aquino; saxophonist Gianluca Lusi's standards session What's New? (2014, Caligola); alto saxophonist Vincenzo Saetta's Nowhere (2019, Tǔk Music); pianist Luca Mannutza's Wayne Shorter tribute The Uneven Shorter (2021, Birdbox Records); and vocalist Ivana Muscoso's BLue Experience, on which he shares the session with trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso.

His longest-running and most visible association, however, has been with saxophonist Stefano Di Battista. Sorrentino first appears on Di Battista's 2014 duo album with guitarist Sylvain Luc, Giù la Testa, and went on to become the double bassist of Di Battista's regular quartet, documented at the Discogs credit level across Italian Standards (2016, Casa del Jazz), Morricone Stories (2021, Warner) alongside pianist Fred Nardin and drummer André Ceccarelli, and La Dolce Vita (2024, Warner), a run now spanning a full decade. Sorrentino's own biography also names touring and performing relationships with trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso, pianists Dado Moroni and Rita Marcotulli, trumpeter Enrico Rava, and singer-songwriter Joe Barbieri, though only the Bosso connection is independently confirmed by a recorded, Discogs-documented credit; the others are reported here as career highlights from his own biography rather than session-level verified facts.

Alongside performing, Sorrentino has toured internationally in Russia, Mexico, France, Spain and Morocco, and has taught electric bass at "Punto Musica" in Somma Vesuviana; he now holds the chair of jazz double bass and electric bass at the Conservatorio "Gesualdo da Venosa" in Potenza. He has lived in Rome for more than two decades. He has also worked occasionally in film and theater, co-composing music for a small number of short films and appearing as an on-screen musician in a handful of Italian productions during the 2010s.

Sorrentino's playing sits at the intersection of two working circles. With Andrea Rea, Elio Coppola and (in the Sorrentino Quartet years) his brother Massimo, he has spent two decades inside a small, self-contained Neapolitan working group built around original compositions and a contemporary acoustic-trio sound - the same rhythm section carried across both the Andrea Rea Trio and Dea Trio recordings. With Stefano Di Battista, by contrast, he has spent a decade as a section player inside a saxophone-led working quartet built on bebop vocabulary and, on the two Warner albums, on Italian film and song repertoire treated as standards - a mainstream, melody-first setting closer to the tradition Buster Williams and Benny Golson themselves represent, the jury who gave Sorrentino his own breakout prize in 2007.