Fabrizio Sotti is a guitarist, composer and producer born in Padua, Italy, on April 27, 1975, who moved to New York as a teenager and has since split his working life between jazz records under his own name and studio production for singers and rappers. His leader discography begins with This World Upside Down (1999), an American debut recorded with trumpeter Randy Brecker, drummer Al Foster and bassist John Patitucci, and runs through the trio album Forty (2016) with bassist Peter Slavov and drummer Francisco Mela. He also co-produced two Cassandra Wilson albums, Blue Note's Glamoured (2003) and Another Country (2012), the second billed to Wilson featuring Sotti. Discogs tags all six of his leader releases as jazz.

He says he started on piano at five with his grandmother and switched to guitar at nine. In 1991 he left Padua for New York, a jazz-devoted sixteen-year-old by his own account, and in an interview with La Voce di New York he names Steve La Spina, Al Foster, Randy Brecker and John Patitucci among the musicians he met and played with early on. The All About Jazz biography adds trumpeters Brian Lynch and Roy Hargrove and saxophonists George Coleman and George Garzone to the list; those four are reported in biographies rather than confirmed at the release-credit level. Foster, Brecker and Patitucci are confirmed by the Discogs credits on This World Upside Down.

That first record, released on Eclipse in 1999, is a ten-track set of four standards ("Autumn Leaves," "I'll Remember April," "Days of Wine and Roses," "On Green Dolphin Street") and Sotti originals. Discogs credits Brecker on trumpet, Foster and Victor Jones on drums, and Patitucci, James Genus and Cameron Brown on acoustic bass, without assigning them to individual tracks. Sotti says he founded his own label, Sotti Records, in 1999 in a one-bedroom apartment in Harlem, and the imprint and its studio, Sotti Studio in New York, run through most of his later credits. Through My Eyes (Rai Trade, 2004) was recorded in July and November 2002 at Villa Condulmer Studios in Italy and Smythe Studio in New York and produced by Sotti with Dennis D'Amico.

The years between those two albums are mostly production. Discogs credits him with guitar on Lathun's Fortunate (Motown, 2002), as producer and instrumentalist on Kyrsten's "Move With Me" featuring Foxy Brown (2003) and her album So In Love (2004, on his Sotti Records), and as producer of dancehall singles by Dia and Half Pint. It credits him as producer of "If I Fail" on Tupac Shakur's The Rose Vol. 2 (2005), of seven tracks on the Dead Prez and M-1 album Confidential (2006), of a track on Hell Razah's Renaissance Child (2007) and of "'Til We Get There" on K'naan's The Dusty Foot Philosopher (2008). Discogs tags all of that work as hip hop, funk/soul or reggae, and it is the largest body of his credits outside jazz.

The bridge between the two careers is Cassandra Wilson. Sotti co-produced Glamoured with her for Blue Note, released October 7, 2003. Discogs lists him on guitar for seven of its twelve tracks (1 to 4, 7, 8 and 11) alongside guitarist and banjoist Brandon Ross, bassists Reginald Veal and Calvin Jones, drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Herlin Riley, and harmonica player Grégoire Maret, and Wikipedia credits him as co-writer of "I Want More" and "On This Train." The album reached number 2 on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart in 2004. His guitar on Wilson's "Fragile" also turns up on the Blue Note compilations Blue Note Plays Sting (2005) and Closer To You: The Pop Side (2009). Another Country (eOne, released June 2012) marked the end of Wilson's 20-year Blue Note contract; Sotti plays electric and acoustic guitar throughout, is credited as writer on most of its ten tracks, and co-produced it with Wilson at Piety Street Studios in New Orleans, Sotti Studio in New York and Studio Larione 10 in Florence. It also reached number 2 on Top Jazz Albums.

His own records from 2010 onward return to jazz while keeping the pop and hip-hop contacts. Inner Dance (E1 Entertainment, 2010), recorded in February and April 2009 at Avatar Studios and Sotti Studio, features organist Sam Barsh, Victor Jones and Mino Cinelu on drums and percussion, Grégoire Maret on harmonica for the title track, and the vocalist Claudia Acuña on "Amanecer," a song she co-wrote; Discogs also carries Acuña's credit on that track. Right Now (2013) is a trio record with bassist Tony Grey and Cinelu, built on jazz readings of pop and rock songs including U2's "One," Bob Marley's "Waiting in Vain" and Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary," with guests that the album's Wikipedia article lists as Shaggy, Zucchero, Ice-T, Melanie Fiona, Res, M1 of Dead Prez, Acuña, Algebra Blessett and Isabella Lundgren. Discogs credits Acuña there on "Fidjo Maguado." John Fischbach mixed it at Piety Street Studios. Streaming services carry the same material as A Few Possibilities (2014), a 13-track listing that adds a remix; Discogs separately lists a four-track A Few Possibilities on Sotti Entertainment, and Sotti has named it as a particularly important record in an interview with Audeze.

Forty (2016) is the most conventional jazz record in the catalog. It was recorded in Brooklyn on December 9 and 10, 2015 by John Fischbach, with Ted Panken writing the liner notes and Marco Glaviano the photography. Nine of its ten titles are Sotti's own, including the minor blues "Redemption," the dissonant "Dangerous Walk," the solo nylon-string piece "Beginning Now" and the ballad "Thalia," and the one outside piece is "How Insensitive." It was released June 10, 2016, the day after a release concert at New York's Highline Ballroom during the Blue Note Jazz Festival. All About Jazz and JazzTimes both reviewed it, and a Jazz da Gama review calls his writing accessible and sophisticated at once.

Between and after those records he has played as a guest and producer on jazz dates by others: Tony Grey's Elevation (2013, "Someday My Prince Will Come," with Cinelu on percussion), Francesco Lomagistro and Berardi Jazz Connection's A New Journey (P-Vine, 2013, electric guitar) and Alberto Pizzo's On The Way (Incipit, 2014), which he produced and on which he plays nylon-string guitar, with Cinelu featured. Spotify shows a run of newer releases with drummer Omar Hakim and pianist Rachel Z, a Pino Daniele tribute that includes "Quando" (2021, with singer Serena Brancale) and "'O Scarrafone" (2022, with Paolo Fresu), plus two solo singles in 2026. Those Spotify credits are not Discogs-indexed, so the connection to Fresu is stated here without a reciprocal cross-link. D'Angelico Guitars has issued three Fabrizio Sotti signature models, in 2015, 2018 and 2019.

Wikipedia also lists two earlier leader releases, Looking For (1993) and Standards and More (1995), the latter described as featuring bassist Ares Tavolazzi and drummer Mauro Beggio. Neither is indexed on Discogs, so that connection is stated as a published listing and not as a confirmed credit.

In the La Voce di New York interview Sotti names Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix as early influences. An All About Jazz review of Inner Dance hears the spirit of mid-1960s records by Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith in its organ-and-guitar sound, which is why Soul Jazz is among his tags. All About Jazz describes him more broadly as a guitarist who straddles straight-ahead jazz and pop-oriented instrumentals and is a respected accompanist across genres, and Wikipedia's list of his styles runs from bebop and jazz fusion to soul, hip hop, R&B and pop. On Forty he plays the trio format straight, with a nylon-string solo and one standard, while Right Now treats U2, Marley and Hendrix as jazz material.

Jazz is the identity of his own records: all six of his Discogs leader releases are tagged jazz. The hip-hop, R&B and pop production is real and runs from 2002 to 2021, but it sits beside the jazz catalog and is credited to him as a producer, songwriter and guitarist rather than as a bandleader. He plays a Marchione semi-hollow electric for jazz work, according to a Marchione interview, and a Spanish nylon-string cutaway built by the same luthier.