Dante Casu is a Sardinian alto saxophonist and clarinetist who has spent his career inside one of Italy's longest continuously operating jazz orchestras. He plays alto and baritone saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet in the Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna (OJS), a Sassari-based big band founded in 1989 as the Blue Note Orchestra and renamed in 1996 - by its own account, one of the rare Italian orchestras that has operated without interruption since its founding. Casu appears on the orchestra's own current roster (2025) as one of its five saxophonists, alongside section mate Gianpiero Carta, in an eighteen-piece ensemble built on the standard big-band sections plus rhythm.

Two of his recordings with the orchestra are independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level, both made under the direction of guest conductor Giorgio Gaslini: Sacred Concert / Jazz Te Deum (2002, Soul Note), on which he is credited on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, and Il Brutto Anatroccolo (2005, Il Manifesto), credited on alto saxophone and clarinet. Over its history the orchestra has also worked with conductors and soloists including Bruno Tommaso, Carla Bley, Colin Towns, Bob Mintzer, Paolo Fresu and Enrico Rava, and has toured China (2001) and Spain (2004), though Casu's own presence on those specific engagements is not independently documented beyond his standing membership in the ensemble.

Alongside performing, Casu teaches and has built a second career as a music educator. In 2014 he originated the Azuni Jazz Orchestra, an experimental big-band program for students at the Liceo Musicale Azuni in Sassari, soon joined as co-director by colleague Roberto Mura and later by Fabio Melis. What began as an experimental project became a permanent part of the school's curriculum the following year. Drawing from a pool of students across all five years of the school, the Azuni Jazz Orchestra has gone on to perform regularly at Sassari venues such as the Teatro Astra and Teatro Civico, and has worked with visiting professional musicians including saxophonist Gavino Murgia and, at the close of a "Stintino Jazz" seminar series, conductor Bruno Tommaso.

No birth date, birthplace, or formal training history for Casu is publicly documented - not on Discogs (whose artist entry for him carries no biography text), not on Wikipedia in English or Italian, and not on AllMusic or All About Jazz, neither of which lists him. His documented public record is built entirely from the Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna's own materials, the two Gaslini-era Discogs credits, and regional Sardinian press coverage of the Azuni Jazz Orchestra.

Casu's musical identity is that of a section player and educator inside the large-ensemble jazz tradition rather than a leader or soloist with his own recorded catalog. His two Discogs-documented recordings both come from Giorgio Gaslini's large-scale sacred/orchestral jazz commissions for OJS - Sacred Concert / Jazz Te Deum and Il Brutto Anatroccolo - placing his own credited work squarely in the orchestral-jazz and big-band idiom the ensemble has built its identity on since 1989. His teaching career extends the same big-band format downward by a generation: the Azuni Jazz Orchestra applies the section-based, arrangement-driven big-band model he plays under professionally to a student ensemble, with an explicit brief to introduce teenagers to jazz improvisation through that format.