Federica Michisanti is a Rome-born double bassist and composer who writes for small groups built without a piano or guitar. Her first two albums, Trioness (2012) and Isk (2017), are drummerless trios of bass, piano and reeds; the next two, Silent Rides (2018) and Jeux de Couleurs (2020), are a Horn Trio of bass, tenor saxophone or clarinet, and trumpet; and Afternoons (2023) is a quartet with the French clarinetist Louis Sclavis, cellist Vincent Courtois and drummer Michele Rabbia. In the Musica Jazz Top Jazz 2023 poll that quartet record won Album of the Year, and she was named Musician of the Year and her band Formation of the Year, a three-category sweep that Italian coverage said had very few precedents, naming Vijay Iyer and Steve Lehman among the recent exceptions.

She began as an electric bassist. In an interview with Il Giornale della Musica she describes playing rock and progressive rock as a teenager, in cover bands working through Led Zeppelin and Beatles songs, before instrumental and improvised music drew her to the acoustic sound of the double bass. Biographies differ on the timeline: one puts her first electric bass at twenty and the double bass eight years later. She studied at the University of Music in Rome and at Saint Louis College of Music, attended the Siena Jazz and Città di Castello seminars (Discogs names Ramberto Ciammarughi and Miroslav Vitous as teachers there), and studied classical music with Andrea Pighi. In the Giornale interview she says she took part in trio seminars at Siena Jazz with Stefano Battaglia, Paolino Dalla Porta and Fabrizio Sferra, and that she first heard Dave Holland's playing at music school. She teaches at Saint Louis College of Music in Rome and has been on the faculty of the summer masterclasses at the Merano Jazz Academy.

Her first recording credit on Discogs is Almas Heridas (2011, Philology), a tango-quintet album by Calambre Tango Quinteto. The next year she released Trioness, a self-produced album with pianist Simone Maggio and saxophonist Emanuele Melisurgo, recorded in November 2011; the band took the name Trioness, and on Isk (2017, Filibusta Records) the reeds passed to Matt Renzi, who plays tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, English horn and oboe. In the Top Jazz poll she placed second in the new-talent category in 2017 and won it in 2018. In April 2016 she played on Janis, a Janis Joplin tribute by the group of Giovani Leonesse recorded at Casa del Jazz in Rome, alternating double bass and electric bass beside vocalists Camilla Battaglia and Daniela Spalletta and guitarist Eleonora Strino.

The Horn Trio, with Francesco Bigoni on tenor saxophone and clarinet and Francesco Lento on trumpet and flugelhorn, made her name. Its debut Silent Rides (2018, Filibusta) was ranked seventh among the best Italian albums of 2018 in the Top Jazz poll, and in 2019 she won the SIAE special prize for originality of compositional research, whose award included playing with her trio alongside Louis Sclavis. Jeux de Couleurs (2020, Parco della Musica Records), recorded in November 2019 at the Auditorium in Rome, gives each of its eight tracks a colour as its subject, an idea drawn from the relation between music and the other arts. The Horn Trio was named the best Italian formation of the year in the Top Jazz 2020 poll.

Afternoons was recorded in February 2023 and released on Parco della Musica Records that September. It was her first album with a drummer, and Michele Rabbia's drums and electronics sit beside Sclavis's clarinets and Courtois's cello; every piece is her own. Its title comes from the late-afternoon light and the sense of possibility she associates with it, which accompanied the writing of most of the music. In 2022 and 2023 she toured as bassist with the singer Ornella Vanoni, and she is credited on double bass and electric bass on Vanoni's Calma Rivoluzionaria (Live 2023), made with guitarist Eleonora Strino among the band.

Her most recent record, Life on Art (Music for String Quartet +1), appeared in 2026 from Musica Jazz and Saint Louis College of Music. It is a string-quartet project commissioned by the Associazione 4'33" with the Fondazione Palazzo Te in Mantua, with violinist Dominique Pifarély as guest, violinist Eloisa Manera, violist Maria Vicentini and cellist Salvatore Maiore, and it was presented at Palazzo Te on March 8, 2026. It leans on European art music on one side and the jazz avant-garde on the other rather than following the canonical form of string-quartet writing. Alongside her own bands she plays on Convergence (2025, Abeat Records), a quartet album led by drummer Max Trabucco.

Michisanti writes chamber-scale music in which the bass is a melodic voice rather than only a foundation. Her bands leave out the harmonic instruments a jazz group usually carries: the Horn Trio has no drums, piano or guitar, and Trioness has no drummer. She describes her composing process in the Giornale interview as sitting at the piano, keeping silent for a while and then listening to the notes that follow the first ones; she usually starts from a melody, sometimes from a bass line, and often writes two-voice counterpoint. She says what draws her in a piece of music is its impact, intention and sound more than any individual note.

She names Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton and Charles Lloyd among her influences, alongside Dave Holland's bass playing. Reviewing Jeux de Couleurs in Il Giornale della Musica, Marco Maiocco heard cantabile melodies and chromatic orchestration that set Tin Pan Alley echoes and modern European neoclassicism beside plainly jazz passages, and called the record a third-stream mix of European academic traditions and jazz that moves between written structure and improvisation. Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton all have profiles on this site.