Filippo Cosentino was born on May 18, 1983, in Alba, in Piedmont's Langhe wine country, and trained in Bologna. He took his academic diploma in guitar at the Conservatorio G.B. Martini, then a DAMS degree and a specialist degree in music disciplines at the University of Bologna, with a thesis in musical philology. His jazz debut came in the same city, at the Bologna Jazz Festival, and in November 2011 he presented his first album Lanes with his trio at Bologna's Take Five club. He later moved back to Alba, where he runs his own Dragonfly Studio and records, mixes and masters much of his own work.

Lanes (2011) featured trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso with bassists Davide Beatino and Giovanni Sanguineti and drummer Carlo Gaia, all confirmed at the Discogs credit level. Human Being (2013, Emme Record Label) kept Beatino and Gaia in the trio and added American saxophonist Michael Rosen on soprano and tenor, with Cosentino credited on electric, acoustic, classical and baritone guitars and as writer, arranger and producer. L'astronauta (2015, Emme Record Label) marked a change of scale: an acoustic-guitar quartet record with Italian pianist Antonio Zambrini, Danish bassist Jesper Bodilsen and drummer Andrea Marcelli, who also produced the album and co-wrote pieces on it. Cosentino has described the record as organized around the birth of his daughter, with the players given room to interpret his themes and harmonies rather than follow tightly written arrangements.

From 2016 the baritone guitar became the center of his work. Tre (2016, Milk - Minds In a Lovely Karma) is a solo baritone-guitar record, and Spirituals (Jazzit Records, recorded in Rome in November 2015 and issued in 2018) is a nine-part baritone-guitar cycle that Discogs files under classical rather than jazz. In 2017 he made the duo album Come Hell Or High Water with vocalist Federica Gennai (Nkt), and appeared on the Moondogs album Outin' (Devega Records). He also played baritone guitar on bassist Massimiliano Rolff's Jazz Sharing (Jazzit Records, 2016), recorded live at the JazzIt Fest in Collescipoli in June 2015. Baritune (A Baritone Guitar Journey) (Incipit/EgeaMusic, 2020) was recorded in May 2019 at Dragonfly Studio: twelve mostly original solo pieces, with electronics, that also take in standards such as "Beautiful Love", a Händel aria and a Pat Metheny composition.

In 2020 he turned the baritone guitar toward the baroque repertoire on Leave The Thorn, Take The Rose... (Da Vinci Jazz), recorded in January 2020 at Dragonfly Studio with alto saxophonist Filippo Ansaldi, trumpeter Giuseppe Notabella, tuba player Giovanni Forti, bassist Carlo Chirio and drummer Lorenzo Arese. Its source material runs from Monteverdi and Bach to Handel, Pachelbel, Pergolesi and Purcell. Jazz Journal's Michael Tucker described it as chamber music that bridges jazz and classical traditions, in the manner of Jacques Loussier. Heros (Ipogeo Records, released May 24, 2022) moved to a band setting, with Cosentino on guitar, bass and keyboards alongside saxophonist Mattia Dalla Pozza, drummer Daniele Bertone and percussionist Danilo Mineo; his official biography says it reached the first-round ballot for Grammy nominations.

His most prominent jazz recording to date is Ask (Ipogeo Records, 2023), a guitar-piano-drums record with the American pianist Marc Copland and Bertone. Its seven tracks include the original "Leeway", "Beneath", "581 G", "Mermaid" and "Fallout", an alternate take of "581 G", and a track titled "L'Astronauta", the name of his 2015 album. Reviewing it for Jazz Journal in October 2023, Fred Grand called Cosentino's playing warm and conversational and drew comparisons with Wolfgang Dauner and Ralph Towner. His latest release, Ascension (Ipogeo Classic, 2024), is a set of four string quartets (Nos. 5 to 8) performed by the Quartetto Speranza, with Cosentino credited as composer and synthesizer player; Discogs classifies it as contemporary classical music.

Cosentino's other career is as a composer and producer for stage and screen and as a session and touring guitarist. His credits include the feature film GOW, the musical Carlotta the Musical, the theatre piece on Liliana Segre, and several documentaries and short films, and, according to his official biography, he wrote Circle #1 on commission from the Lviv Philharmonic in Ukraine for its resident string quartet. He has played live with Italian pop artists including Paola Turci, Andrea Mirò and Tricarico, and, in jazz, with Marc Copland, Fabrizio Bosso, Rita Marcotulli, Danilo Rea and Gabriele Mirabassi, per Italian Wikipedia and his official biography. He has toured internationally, including a Hong Kong tour listed by the Italian Cultural Institute there. Italian Wikipedia also credits him with contributing to two recordings by the late conductor and composer Ezio Bosso.

Cosentino's core identity is that of a jazz-trained guitarist who writes for baritone guitar and string quartet and moves between jazz, classical and film-score settings. On the jazz side, his leader records range from the trio and quartet dates of Lanes, Human Being and L'astronauta to the piano-and-guitar interplay of Ask; Jazz Journal's review of Ask set his lyricism beside that of Wolfgang Dauner and Ralph Towner, and his 2020 solo album Baritune includes a Pat Metheny composition. His interest in the baritone guitar, a longer-scaled, lower-tuned instrument that he treats as a lead voice rather than an accompaniment tool, runs through Tre, Spirituals, Baritune and Ask.

Alongside that, a substantial part of his catalogue sits outside jazz. Spirituals and Ascension are filed as classical on Discogs, Leave The Thorn, Take The Rose... reimagines baroque scores for a jazz-guitar-and-electronics ensemble, and his film, theatre and string-quartet writing is a parallel career. Seven of his nine leader releases on Discogs carry a Jazz genre tag, and both of his Jazz Journal reviews concern records on which he plays as a jazz guitarist. His non-jazz guest appearances, such as guitar on a track by the ska band Chilafapuliska, are minor by comparison.