Domenico Caliri was born in Messina on December 11, 1967, and started on guitar at eleven. He studied improvisation with Daniele Grasso (1987-1988) and harmony, composition and analysis with composer Albino Taggeo (1987-1990), then went through the Italian Youth Jazz Orchestra's professional course in Siena (1992-1993) and the O.F.P. training program (1993-1994). In October 1990 he moved to Bologna, where he has been a central figure of the city's jazz scene ever since.

His most visible early credit came through trumpeter Enrico Rava, whose Electric Five touring band Caliri played and recorded in; by his own account the group toured internationally and intercontinentally from 1993 to 2001, though the only release under that billing that Discogs documents is the self-titled Electric Five (1995, Soul Note), which credits Caliri on electric guitar alongside fellow guitarist Roberto Cecchetto, reedist Gianluigi Trovesi, bassist Giovanni Maier and drummer U.T. Gandhi. Rava later returned the connection, writing the liner notes for Caliri's own Camera Lirica (2014, Caligola). Also in the 1990s, Caliri co-founded the Bologna improvisers' collective Bassesfere (1993) and led the Specchio Ensemble (1992-1999), which won the Iceberg Biennale Giovani competition in 1994.

Caliri's longest-running vehicle as a leader is Cal Trio, active since 1999 with double bassist Antonio Borghini and drummer Cristiano Calcagnile on its first two records, Casa 3 (2002, Bassesferec) and Do Ut Do (2005, Caligola). A later lineup, with double bassist Stefano Senni and drummer Marco Frattini, recorded Aria Mossa (2018, Caligola) and, expanded to a quartet with pianist Fabrizio Puglisi, Quarto (2026, Caligola). In between, Caliri led a related chamber-strings project, Domenico Caliri Violongerìa, pairing his classical and electric (including prepared electric) guitar with cello, viola and violin on Il Buio Acceso (2009, Caligola) - again with Borghini and Calcagnile in the rhythm section, alongside cellist Francesco Guerri, violist Paolo Botti and violinists Erica Scherl and Maria Vicentini. His official biography also credits a separate duo vehicle, the Dedalo Guitar Project (electric and classical guitars, active 1998-2015), though no dated recording under that name could be independently matched to a Discogs release for this profile.

His most ambitious ongoing project is Camera Lirica, an "avant-jazz" ensemble of thirteen musicians that he has directed and composed for since 2006. Its 2014 Caligola debut - the album for which Rava wrote the liner notes - ranked third in the Italian critics' Top Jazz poll that year and draws on a chamber-orchestra palette (oboe, French horn, cello, tuba, vibraphone) alongside a jazz rhythm section that includes fellow bandleaders already covered on this project: pianist Alfonso Santimone on Fender Rhodes and Korg MS-10, and reedist Beppe Scardino on baritone saxophone and bass clarinet.

More recently, Caliri recorded Dialoghi a Corde (Onyx Dischi), a guitar-and-bass duo record with double bassist Ares Tavolazzi - captured live in 2013 at Matera's Gezziamoci festival and eventually released in 2025 - and, outside the Discogs-documented catalog this profile otherwise relies on, a 2024 duo album with pianist/synthesist Tonino Miano, Strings Currents, covered by Musica Jazz and released independently on Bandcamp.

Alongside performing, Caliri has built a substantial teaching career: jazz guitar in Bologna-area music schools (1991-2011), then jazz guitar professor at conservatories in Potenza, Bari, Benevento, Matera and Rovigo from 2008, with a tenured position since 2018. He has taught at Bologna's own Conservatorio "G.B. Martini" since 2020 and joined its Academic Council in 2025. His commissioned and arranging work includes an orchestral piece for the Angelica Festival (1998), an arrangement of Vivaldi's L'Estro Armonico (2010), and Jazziah, a jazz adaptation of Handel's Messiah (2017). Discogs' own database of 41 documented artist-relationship credits for Caliri also includes an appearance, in 1998, on the same release as American trumpeter Lester Bowie - Lorenzo Gasperoni Mamud Band's Amore Pirata! (Il Manifesto) - and, per his own official biography, attendance at film-scoring workshops led by trumpeter Paolo Fresu in the early 1990s (1991-1993), a documented teacher-student connection rather than a recorded credit.

Caliri's catalog runs two distinct but overlapping practices. One is compositional and chamber-scaled: Camera Lirica's thirteen-piece "avant-jazz" ensemble writes for orchestral color (oboe, French horn, cello, tuba) inside a jazz frame, and Domenico Caliri Violongerìa extends the same instinct to a guitar-and-strings quartet format, with Caliri himself credited on Discogs for "prepared electric guitar" technique on Il Buio Acceso. The other is the tighter working-trio format of Cal Trio, a guitar-bass-drums (later guitar-piano-bass-drums) unit that has run continuously since 1999 across two different rhythm sections. Both practices trace back to Caliri's roots in Bologna's Bassesfere free-improvisers' collective, which he co-founded in 1993, and both sit alongside a separate, well-documented career as a classical/orchestral arranger - Vivaldi, Handel - that this profile discloses in Biography rather than folding into the jazz subgenre tags above.