Federico Pierantoni is a trombonist from Minerbio, a town in the province of Bologna, born in 1989. He began studying music at age 8 and chose the trombone at 14. He took a jazz diploma at the G. B. Martini Conservatory in Bologna, where his trombone teacher was Massimo Morganti, and a trombone diploma at the F. Venezze Conservatory in Rovigo, with Mauro Morini. In 2014 he took private lessons in Boston with trombonist Hal Crook, and his festival biography adds workshops at Nuoro Jazz, Arcevia and Siena Jazz with Michael Blake and Greg Osby, among others.

Much of his career has been spent in big bands and large ensembles, where he is a trombone section player and, in the New Italian Jazz Orchestra, the lead trombonist. His biographies list the Umbria Jazz Big Band, the Reunion Big Band, the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, the Orchestra Jazz del Veneto, the Colour Jazz Orchestra, the Italian Big Band and the Lydian Sound Orchestra. Two Discogs-credited sessions show the range of that work. On Bud Powell in the 21st Century (Sunnyside, 2021), recorded live at Umbria Jazz Winter in Orvieto in December 2018, he sits in the trombone section of Ethan Iverson's arrangements for the Umbria Jazz Orchestra alongside Massimo Morganti and Roberto Rossi, with Ben Street on bass, Lewis Nash on drums, Dayna Stephens on tenor saxophone, Ingrid Jensen on trumpet and Daniele Tittarelli on alto saxophone. Bill Frisell's Orchestras (Blue Note, 2024) pairs Frisell's trio with Thomas Morgan on bass and Rudy Royston on drums with two orchestras; on its second disc the Umbria Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Manuele Morbidini, plays seven tracks, and Pierantoni is credited on trombone for all of them. In 2022 he also worked with Franco D'Andrea on the project that became Sketches of the 20th Century (Parco della Musica Records, 2023), where he is credited on tenor trombone in a large ensemble that includes Achille Succi and drummer Roberto Gatto. A third orchestral credit is No More Wrong Mistakes (This Our Music) (Parco della Musica Records, 2022), recorded at Casa del Jazz in Rome by the Lydian Sound Orchestra under Riccardo Brazzale with David Murray as featured tenor saxophonist.

Alongside the big-band work he plays in a run of small groups, many of them centered on Emilia-Romagna and the Veneto. Bad Uok, the bass-less quartet founded by drummer Andrea Grillini with pianist Andrea Calì and guitarist Leonardo Rizzi, made Enter (Auand, 2013) and Lateless (Trouble in the East, 2020, recorded in 2015) with him as its only horn. He is also the trombonist on Grillini's later group Tell No Lies, led by pianist Nicola Guazzaloca, on Anasyrma (Aut Records, 2020), Hide Nothing (2022) and Mantica (2025). Other working groups include The Auanders, the nine-piece Auand Records ensemble that recorded Live in Pisa (2013) with baritone saxophonist Beppe Scardino, tenor saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti and bassist Francesco Ponticelli; Foursome, an organ quartet with trumpeter Simone Copellini, organist Giulio Stermieri and drummer Riccardo Frisari, whose Smut! Clock! Spot! (Auand, 2016) has no bass player either; Selfie Jungle, a Duke Ellington tribute quintet with guitarist Marcello Abate, tubist Glauco Benedetti, violinist Federico Zaltron and cellist Caterina Salizzato, heard on Stick to Duke (Velut Luna, 2022); and the Tower Jazz Composers Orchestra, whose self-titled 2019 album was directed by Piero Bittolo Bon and Alfonso Santimone. Santimone also arranged and conducted the Unscientific Italians' two volumes of Bill Frisell's music (Hora Records, 2021 and 2022), on which Pierantoni plays in a three-trombone section with Filippo Vignato and Lorenzo Manfredini with Danilo Gallo on bass. Earlier in the decade he appeared on saxophonist pianist Marcello Tonolo's Crazeology (Caligola, 2014), a quartet record with American saxophonist Chris Cheek as guest, and on vocalist Camilla Battaglia's Tomorrow-2more Rows of Tomorrows (Dodicilune, 2016), with bassist Andrea Lombardini.

His own projects are smaller and more intimate. The Smogs, a quartet he leads, was built on his idea of a sound centered on low instruments used contrapuntally in the front line: trombone, baritone saxophone (Beppe Scardino), double bass (Marco Benedetti) and drums (Bernardo Guerra). The group played the Monday Night Raw series at the Torrione jazz club in Ferrara in January 2018, and a live album from Torrione was released on his Bandcamp page in 2020, with Piero Bittolo Bon guesting on one track. A trio with guitarist Antonio Cavicchi and bassist Stefano Galassi reinterprets jazz-tradition repertoire in a chamber-like form, and a Tokyo quintet was presented at the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo. His duet project 6x2 is a two-volume series on the Encore label: Vol. 1 (2022) pairs him with bassist Stefano Dallaporta, guitarist Antonio Cavicchi, baritone saxophonist Giulia Barba, alto saxophonist Piero Bittolo Bon, trumpeter Mirko Cisilino and clarinetist Gianluca Fortini, and Vol. 2 (2023) adds six more duet partners, among them Filippo Vignato, drummer Zeno De Rossi and Alfonso Santimone on the track "Enel luce e gas."

In 2024 he released Sliders (Hora Records, November 21, 2024) with Filippo Vignato and Lorenzo Manfredini: three trombones and no rhythm section, 17 tracks in which each player contributes compositions and arrangements, alongside covers including Carla Bley's "Ida Lupino," Egberto Gismonti's "Palhaço," Duke Ellington's "I Got It Bad" and John Coltrane's "After the Rain." Jazzitalia and Doppio Jazz both reviewed it.

Recognition includes a semifinal place at the 2015 J. J. Johnson Jazz Trombone Competition and, in 2019, a competitive artistic residency at the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo, won through the AIR MIDJ call. Since November 2021 he has taught trombone at Siena Jazz. He has also played on pop records: Discogs credits him with the horn section and horn arrangements on Marco Mengoni's Le cose che non ho (2015) and on trombone in the wind-and-strings ensemble Esecutori di Metallo su Carta on Daniele Silvestri's La terra sotto i piedi (2019), where Beppe Scardino also plays, and his biographies mention work with Jovanotti, Calibro 35 and C'mon Tigre. His published biographies also say he has performed with Andy Sheppard, Fabrizio Bosso, Gianluca Petrella, Enrico Rava and Paolo Damiani, and in the group Zapping directed by bassist Furio Di Castri; those engagements are documented in his biographies rather than in release credits.

As a sideman on smaller labels he is credited on more than a dozen further jazz records, among them Marco Benedetti's 28 anni trascinati male (Honolulu, 2016) with Achille Succi on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, Luca Zennaro's Javaskara (Caligola, 2018), Emanuele Filippi's Polyphonies (Artesuono, 2018), Sara Battaglini's Dalia (Auand, 2019) and Vernal Love (2021), Michele Bonifati's Three Knots (Nusica.org, 2023) with drummer Evita Polidoro, Giulio Campagnolo and the Jazz Funkers' C'mon! (Irma, 2024), Max Trabucco's Convergence (Abeat, 2025) with double bassist Federica Michisanti, and Silvia Tarozzi's Lucciole (Unseen Worlds, 2025).

Pierantoni is a trombonist who moves easily between section playing and exposed solo or duo settings. The large-ensemble records show a lead and section player at home in Bill Frisell's and Ethan Iverson's orchestral writing, while the small-group records lean toward the avant-garde end of contemporary Italian jazz: Tell No Lies and Bad Uok are free-leaning and rhythmically unconventional, the Smogs organize a front line around low instruments, and Sliders gives three trombones the entire space of a record. Discogs tags his releases mostly as Contemporary Jazz, with Avant-garde Jazz on several of them and Soul-Jazz on the Campagnolo and Selfie Jungle records.

His training is conservatory-based, with a Bologna jazz diploma under Massimo Morganti and a Rovigo trombone diploma, plus private study in Boston with Hal Crook. Repertoire on his own records ranges from a Bach prelude and fugue and "Darn That Dream" on 6 X 2, Vol. 1 to covers of Ellington, Gismonti, Carla Bley and Coltrane on Sliders.