Federico Gili is an Umbrian accordionist and composer, born in 1985, who has built a jazz career on an instrument more often heard in folk and light-classical settings. He took a classical accordion diploma with top marks at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence and a degree in Music Didactics, with top marks and honors, at the Arrigo Boito Conservatory in Parma. His biography names Ramberto Ciammarughi, Fabio Zeppetella, Umberto Fiorentino and Roberto Gatto among his jazz teachers, and some promotional biographies add that he studied with Richard Galliano and Frank Marocco. Galliano, in liner notes for Gili's debut, wrote that Gili "pushes the apparent limits of the accordion," and Gili's biographies quote Galliano calling him the best talent of the new generation.

His earliest recordings were with the Fuccelli Fisarmony Orchestra, an accordion orchestra directed by Roberto Fuccelli, on which he is credited on four albums between 2007 and 2021: Libertario, Meraviglioso, Live Session and LinAura. The last of these features trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso on its title track. Those records lean toward tango, film themes and classical arrangements rather than jazz, and none of them is itemized on Discogs. In 2017 he and pianist Manuel Magrini won the Premio Luttazzi as a duo, and in 2018 he won the 43rd Premio Internazionale della Fisarmonica at Castelfidardo in the Jazz category with the AccorDuo project, a duo with fellow accordionist Matteo Marinelli. In 2021 a saxophone-and-accordion duo with Lorenzo Bisogno took the Premio Massimo Urbani, per his biography.

His first album as a leader, Cantabile (Caligola, 2022), is a solo accordion record recorded on November 29, 2021, with bandoneonist Daniele Di Bonaventura as the only guest. It holds six of his own pieces, the standards "All the Things You Are" and "Days of Wine and Roses," Ciammarughi's "Amici" and Zeppetella's "Choro pra Gianlu." Press coverage credits Di Bonaventura with producing it. Gili followed it with La Lanterna (Encore Music, released September 6, 2024, recorded in November 2023 at Entropia Recording Studio in Perugia), a nine-track album of seven of his compositions, Zeppetella's "Toots" and a version of the Bruno Lauzi song "Almeno tu nell'universo." Its band is bassist Ares Tavolazzi, formerly of Area, who also wrote the liner notes; Zeppetella on guitar; Ciammarughi and Magrini splitting the piano chair; Lorenzo Bisogno on saxophone; and Lorenzo Brilli on drums. JAZZIT magazine included La Lanterna in its list of the 100 best jazz albums of 2024.

Outside his own records he plays accordion on "Amara Terra Mia" on pianist Christian Pabst's Afro-Cuban-leaning The Palm Tree Line (JazzSick Records, 2023), and he keeps two working duos: with Magrini, in a piano-and-accordion concert format built on original compositions, and with Bisogno, a saxophone-and-accordion pairing that has played the Rework Club in Perugia. His biography lists appearances at the Festival dei Due Mondi, Young Jazz Festival, Cambio Festival and the Jazz Accordion Festival, and he plays Victoria accordions, built in Castelfidardo.

Gili's promotional material and reviews describe an accordionist who carries the instrument's popular, singing side into jazz, using melody as the link between the two worlds. The Jazz Convention review places him in a line of jazz accordionists running through Galliano and Marocco and calls his approach direct and warm; Mescalina's review calls La Lanterna pleasant jazz in which the accordion is prominent without overshadowing the other players; Doppio Jazz calls its construction not banal. His writing draws on Brazilian choro, with three titles built on the form ("Chorinho pra Ila," "Choro pra Gianlu" and "Choro pra Manuel"), and on standards and Italian song. His classical conservatory background sits behind the hymn-like "Corale (Racconto di un'alba)" on the solo record.