Fabio Morgera is a trumpeter, flugelhorn player, composer, arranger and producer born in Naples on April 24, 1963 and raised in Florence. By his own biography he lost his left hand at the age of four, learned guitar and electric bass in a left-handed fashion, and switched to trumpet at fifteen. He studied at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, took clinics with Enrico Rava, Kenny Wheeler and Terence Blanchard, and graduated from the Livorno conservatory. Two competition results date from those years: second prize at the 1981 Leverkusen jazz competition for newcomers and second prize in the 1986 big-band arranging competition in Barga; Discogs logs a release from each event, the 1982 1st European Jazz Competition compilation and the 1987 Barga arranging compilation on Splasc(h).

His name first turns up in the Discogs credits in 1982, and by 1984 he is the trumpeter on Giorgio Gaslini's Octet album Monodrama (Dischi Della Quercia, 1984), alongside Claudio Allifranchini, Maurizio Caldura, Daniele Di Gregorio and Piero Leveratto. His biography also places him in the CAM orchestra conducted by Bruno Tommaso at seventeen and in the European Community Youth Jazz Orchestra; neither of those is itemized on Discogs, so they rest on his own account. In 1985 he moved to the United States to study composition and arranging at the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles, where he names Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel and Bill Conti among his teachers, and in 1987 he transferred to Berklee College of Music in Boston, studying with Herb Pomeroy. Among his other teachers he lists Donald Byrd, Eddie Henderson, Butch Morris and Valery Ponomarev.

His first record as a leader, Take One (Red Records), was made in Boston in December 1990 with saxophonist George Garzone, pianist Christian Jacob, bassist Gildas Boclé and drummer Marcello Pilitteri. He moved to New York in 1990 and followed it within months with The Pursuit (Ken Music, 1991), recorded on March 4 and 5, 1991 at Crystal Sound with alto saxophonist Jesse Davis, pianist Geoff Keezer, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Billy Hart, with Leon Parker on one track. He stayed in New York for more than two decades, working as a bandleader at clubs such as Birdland and Visiones. His biography says he shared stages with Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Jackie McLean, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins and Tony Williams, and played in the Mingus Big Band, the Village Vanguard Orchestra and Roy Hargrove's big band; those claims are his own and are not itemized in the Discogs credits.

In the 1990s he was also a founding member of Groove Collective, the New York acid jazz band whose lineup paired his trumpet with trombonist Josh Roseman, saxophonist and flutist Jay Rodriguez, vibraphonist Bill Ware and a rhythm section led by percussionist and MC Gordon "Nappy G" Clay. Discogs credits him on trumpet and flugelhorn on the band's self-titled Reprise debut (1994) and lists him on We The People (1996), Dance of the Drunken Master (1998), Declassified (1999) and People People Music Music (2006, Savoy Jazz). The last of those was nominated for Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the 49th Grammy Awards (2007), the one Grammy nomination listed under his name.

The other track of his New York decade ran through the Italian label Red Records. With tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen and bassist Eric Revis as constants, he made a run of quartet and quintet albums: Slick (1999, with vibraphonist Bill Ware, trombonist Jason Jackson and drummer Alvester Garnett), New Hopes (recorded in June 1999 and released in 2001 by the Japanese label What'sNew, with organist Jesse Chandler), Colors (2002, recorded in March 2000, with trombonist Steve Turre and pianists James Hurt and Joe Rybczyk Jr.) and Red Stars (2004), a co-billed session with drummer Victor Lewis and Allen. He was also a producer for the label, credited on Allen's debut In Search Of (1999), Pablo Bobrowicky's New York Connection (2005), Saul Rubin's The Zebtet (2014) and Dida Pelled's A Missing Shade of Blue (2016).

The Voice Within (2005) was his widest-angle record: a twelve-track set with saxophonist Stefano Di Battista, harmonica player Gregoire Maret, guitarist Saul Rubin, cellist Bruno Biscik, DJ Romain on scratches and a rapper and poet billed as Dionysus, closing with a live 2000 bonus track that features the singer Norah Jones. Need for Peace (Smalls Records, 2007) is a sixteen-track record built around vocalists Krystle Warren, Miles Griffith and Antonio Barbagallo, on which Morgera also sings one number. Neapolitan Heart (EmArcy, 2009) was his return to the songs of his birthplace, reworking "Reginella", "Caruso" and "Funiculi Funicula" with American players including tenor saxophonist Stacy Dillard, pianist Craig Hartley and vibraphonist Christos Rafalides. Live at the Loft_01 (Drycastle, 2012) documents a February 2009 concert in Prato with Rafalides, saxophonist Dario Cecchini and bassist Paolo Ghetti, and Ctrl Z (Alfa Music, 2015), his NyCats project, is a seven-track set of his own compositions with pianists Orrin Evans and Charles Blenzig and organist Brian Charette on one track.

Beyond his own records he has been a steady section trumpeter and guest in New York bands. Discogs credits him with Alvin Queen's quintet on I'm Back (1992), the Village Be-Bop All Stars (2001), Butch Morris's Nublu Orchestra at the Saalfelden festival (2010), Orrin Evans's Captain Black Big Band on Mother's Touch (2014, alongside trumpeter Duane Eubanks) and Hector Martignon's Banda Grande on The Big Band Theory (2016). He wrote the liner notes for pianist Johnny O'Neal's O'Neal Is Back (2016), and he played on guitarist and singer Dida Pelled's debut Plays and Sings (2010), a record he helped put together, on which Roy Hargrove and drummer Gregory Hutchinson also appear, and as guest and producer on her A Missing Shade of Blue (2016) with drummer Rodney Green and flutist Itai Kriss.

He has spent the years since his return to Italy, roughly from 2013, in Florence and on the conservatory circuit. He directs the Natural Revolution Orchestra, a Florence big band that plays his compositions and arrangements using the Conduction system of conducted improvisation he learned from Butch Morris; its recordings include Climate Blues (2018) and Visuale Primordiale (2019). Riccardo Fassi Tankio Band Meets Fabio Morgera (Alfa Music, 2016) has him as composer, arranger, conductor and soprano trombone player with trumpeter Claudio Corvini in the Tankio Band's trumpet section. More recent records include John Lewis Centennial (2020, with the group Botte di Cool and Dario Cecchini), In a Taurean Way (Tribute to Joe Henderson) (Red Records, 2022) and 100 Estati (2025), a tribute to the songwriter Bruno Martino recorded with singer Antonio Barbagallo, which grew out of a nonet he arranged and presented in New York in August 2024. Since 2017 he has taught jazz at Italian conservatories (trumpet, ensemble, improvisation and composition in La Spezia, Frosinone, Rodi Garganico, Cosenza, Alessandria, Vibo Valentia, Milan, Bologna, Trieste, Cesena and Salerno), and since 2024 he has held a full-time chair in jazz composition at the Conservatorio Morlacchi in Perugia, where he also sits on the jury of the Premio Perugia Alberto Alberti.

Morgera is a jazz trumpeter first. Every one of his leader records is filed under Jazz on Discogs, most of them as post-bop or hard bop, and he taught jazz composition and trumpet in Italian conservatories. His sound and repertoire come from the hard-bop and post-bop tradition, with Joe Henderson as an evident touchstone, given his 2022 tribute album. In a 2024 interview he described his priorities in terms of the blues and African-American musical foundations rather than ear training alone.

The edges of his work are wider than that core. Groove Collective put him in the acid jazz and jazz-funk world of 1990s New York, and Discogs also logs appearances on dance, club and hip-hop records, among them Ed O.G & Da Bulldogs, Jazz Not Jazz Massive and DJ Smash releases. The Voice Within and Need for Peace mix vocalists, DJ scratching and rap with jazz horns, Neapolitan Heart turns the Neapolitan song canon into modern jazz, and with the Natural Revolution Orchestra and his Nublu Orchestra work with Butch Morris he treats the large ensemble as a space for conducted improvisation.