Fabio Sartori is a pianist and composer who works in Rome and comes from Montegiorgio, in the Marche. He holds diplomas in classical piano and in jazz from Rome's Conservatorio S. Cecilia and a philosophy degree from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. His label biography lists Mulgrew Miller, Ramberto Ciammarughi, Danilo Rea, Daniele di Bonaventura, Bruno Tommaso and Giancarlo Gazzani among the musicians with whom he studied composition, piano and improvisation. He won the Barga Jazz competition, and a 2018 profile names his father Enzo, a guitarist and composer, as his main mentor.

His recording career opens in the early 2000s as a sideman. He played with the Argentine guitarist Mario Corradini's group in 2001, and Discogs lists him on keyboards on Corradini's Musica E Dintorni Live (2002). Since 2008 he has also worked as a music consultant at RAI, the Italian broadcaster. His own records begin with Escher (Terre Sommerse, released 18 December 2010), a duo with the multi-instrumentalist Roberto Laneri, whom he had partnered since 2009. Sartori plays piano against Laneri's saxophone and clarinet, and an Italian review of the record described a layered, partly overdubbed album in which the two blues pieces were played live. In 2010 he also co-created BARàKA, a sound and visual installation, with the visual artist Samuele Niccolini, whose photographs later appear on the covers of his records. Tabula Rasa (Terre Sommerse, 2012) is his solo-piano album, recorded on 1 October 2011 and built on the idea of a wax tablet wiped clean, with much of the material improvised from zero.

The centre of his catalogue is a trio with the clarinettist and saxophonist Marco Colonna and the drummer Cristiano Calcagnile, and it has no bass player. (In)Obediens (Rudi Records, 2014) was recorded in Rome at Extrabeat Studio in November 2013 and February 2014; Sartori wrote its English liner notes and mixed it, and his own website says Musica Jazz singled it out among the best new releases. Suite Per Osvaldo (Rudi Records, released 29 May 2017) is a seven-part suite for the painter Osvaldo Licini (1894-1958), recorded live in Rome on 18 November 2016, with liner notes by Eugenio Colombo. Its titles include Amalassunta, Missili Lunari and Angeli Ribelli, names of painting series by Licini. Musica Jazz's review praised Sartori's clear, dry touch and said the trio favoured harmonic and polyphonic exploration over virtuosity.

Colonna is a constant across Sartori's other projects, and Sartori often trades piano for Hammond organ in them. He is the organist on Our Ground (Live In Rome) by the MC3 Marco Colonna Trio, recorded live on 10 April 2014 with drummer Stefano Cupellini, and on Bright Lights, Big City (2015) by Baritone Sax Revolution, a group built on two baritone saxophones, guitar, organ and drums, which Sartori co-produced with Colonna. He also plays piano on Laurent Digbeu's Riflessioni Pielhy Reflexions (2011). Outside the records he co-founded the netlabel Ad-lab, scored the short film L'ombra del Destino in 2013, and has composed for theatre. His website lists Diario da una quarantena, a set of improvisations and meditations released in April 2020.

His newest record is Maqam (Dodicilune, released 11 February 2026), a trio album with Colonna on bass clarinet and Calcagnile on drums. It consists of two long pieces, Maqam II followed by Maqam I, 44 minutes 50 seconds in all, recorded live in the studio at Studio Miriam in Rome on 17 May 2025 and mixed and mastered on 1 July 2025. Sartori wrote all the music, produced it with Dodicilune's Maurizio Bizzochetti, and describes it as "a look to the East", an attempt to find points of contact between the maqam tradition and his own language. The critic Igor Ebuli Poletti reviewed it as philosophical inquiry rather than "world music".

Sartori is a jazz musician first. Every leader release in his catalogue is filed under jazz on Discogs, most with Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation, Free Jazz or Avant-garde Jazz style tags, and his training, prize and press coverage all come from the jazz world: a jazz diploma at S. Cecilia, the Barga Jazz competition win and reviews in Musica Jazz. His RAI work is a parallel career in broadcasting rather than a competing musical identity.

His records are usually organized around a concept borrowed from outside music: a painter's letters and poems for Suite Per Osvaldo, the blank wax tablet of Tabula Rasa, the modal system of Arabic music for Maqam. The Musica Jazz review of Suite Per Osvaldo likens his experimental philosophy to that of Paul Bley, and it describes the piano playing as measured and free of effects, sitting between written passages and free improvisation. The trio's lack of a bass leaves the piano to carry harmony and pulse against Colonna's clarinet colours and Calcagnile's polyrhythmic drumming.