Francesco Bigoni was born in 1982 in Ferrara and is largely self-taught. His own biography credits an early encounter with Steve Lacy (a 1998 seminar, per Jazzitalia) and three editions of the Siena Jazz seminars as the formative pieces of his education; a Siena Jazz scholarship in 2001 sent him to an international jazz-school meeting in Helsinki. That same year he founded his first band, Rootless, with pianist Luca Dell'Anna and drummer Massimiliano Sorrentini. Its debut, Brian Had A Little Plate (El Gallo Rojo, 2005), is that group's first album, with Danilo Gallo on double bass.

From 2004 to 2008 he took part in the Laboratorio Permanente di Ricerca Musicale, the permanent workshop led in Siena by pianist Stefano Battaglia; the workshop's own album, Out-Vestigation (Jazz Engine, 2009), credits Bigoni on tenor saxophone alongside Battaglia, bassist Giulio Corini and drummer Emanuele Maniscalco. His biography also places him in trumpeter Enrico Rava's "Under 21" quintet in 2004 and 2005, and names Rava and Battaglia as his two main mentors. The Rava quintet membership rests on his own biography and Jazzitalia rather than on a Discogs credit: the Rava-billed Jazzitaliano Live 2006 on Discogs lists a different tenor saxophonist.

In the Italian years he was a member of the collective and label El Gallo Rojo (2005 to 2017), and Discogs lists him on 17 releases carrying its imprint, among them Beppe Scardino's Orange Room (2007), Zeno De Rossi's Shtik (2007 and 2010), Antonio Borghini's Malebranche and Alfonso Santimone's Laser Pigs. In 2007 he co-founded Houdini's Cage with bassist Greg Cohen, drummer Zeno De Rossi and guitarist Enrico Terragnoli, whose Memories Of A Barber (2008) has Bigoni on tenor saxophone and harmonium. From 2007 to 2014 he was also a member of trombonist Gianluca Petrella's Cosmic Band, credited on both Spacebone albums, Coming Tomorrow - Part One (2009) and Part Two (2012), and on Jazzitaliano Live 2007, a Casa del Jazz recording directed by Petrella with Paolo Fresu as special guest. By his own account the Cosmic Band won the Musica Jazz critics' poll for best Italian band in 2009.

Bigoni moved to Copenhagen in 2009 and graduated from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory there in 2012, having studied with Django Bates, Nikolaj Hess and Carsten Dahl. He also holds an engineering degree from the Technical University of Denmark and Aalborg University Copenhagen, with a focus on acoustics and signal processing, and has published on interactive instruments at the SMC, ISMIR, MOCO and AES conferences; one of his own designs, an instrument called DogDog that estimates the quality of hand and arm movement, has been used in performance. In Denmark he joined the label ILK, which released the two-volume debut of On Dog (2013), a Danish-Italian project he started with guitarist Mark Solborg, with Beppe Scardino on baritone saxophone; the third volume, Dielectric, followed in 2020. With Solborg and Maniscalco he records as the trio Maniscalco/Bigoni/Solborg, whose three ILK albums (2015, Foil in 2018, Canto in 2022) run from guitar-and-electronics improvisation to chamber-like textures.

Alongside the Copenhagen work, he kept returning to Italian groups. He plays in bassist Federica Michisanti's Horn Trio (Silent Rides, 2018, and Jeux De Couleurs, 2020; by his own account the trio was named best Italian band in the 2019 Musica Jazz critics' poll), on the Danilo Gallo Dark Dry Tears albums (2016, 2020, 2021), in Francesco Diodati's quartet (Purple Bra, 2010; Need Something Strong, 2012) and in the Unscientific Italians, Alfonso Santimone's rearrangement of Bill Frisell's music, whose two volumes (2021, 2022) won a Top Jazz band-of-the-year distinction in 2021. In Denmark he also works with Maria Faust's Sacrum Facere (three albums, 2014 to 2025), the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir, Jacob Anderskov and Johanna Sulkunen. His newest collective is Weave4, a quartet with guitarist Francesco Diodati and the French musicians Benoît Delbecq (piano) and Steve Argüelles (drums), formed in 2021 after a two-week residency in Paris; its self-titled debut appeared on Parco della Musica Records in 2023 and a second album, La Gomma Di Dante, in 2026.

He has taught for about ten years as an external teacher and supervisor at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory and has been on the faculty of Siena Jazz University since 2020, where he teaches saxophone, ear training, interplay and compositional form analysis.

Bigoni plays mostly tenor saxophone and clarinet, with alto and soprano saxophone and self-built electronics in a supporting role. His bandleading work sits in the improvised and avant-garde end of European jazz: Discogs tags his own releases Free Jazz, Free Improvisation and Avant-garde Jazz (Talking, 2010; Hopscotch, 2011; Dielectric, 2020; Weave4, 2023), while the Unscientific Italians and Horn Trio records lean toward Contemporary Jazz. Steve Lacy is the influence he names first, and Rava and Battaglia the mentors. Two features run through his work: an engineering background and self-built electronics that sit alongside the saxophone (the ILK trio records are described as folding in subtle electronics and granular processing), and a habit of playing in groups without a standard rhythm section, such as the reed trio Crisco 3 and the drummerless Horn Trio.