Francesco Chiapperini is a Milan-based clarinetist, bass clarinetist, alto and baritone saxophonist and flutist, born in Bari in 1978. He leads chamber-scaled projects in which free improvisation is tied to a specific repertoire: the Easter music of Molfetta in Puglia, Alpine choir songs, and the 17th-century arias and madrigals of Giulio Caccini. His two main teachers were figures of the Milanese free-jazz scene: Daniele Cavallanti, with whom he studied alto saxophone and who plays tenor saxophone on his 2023 album Transmigration, and the drummer Tiziano Tononi, whose improvisation workshop he attended.

His route into jazz ran through the wind band and the conservatory. By his own account he played for more than twenty years in the town band of Albino, near Bergamo, under the conductor Savino Acquaviva, graduated in clarinet at the Gaetano Donizetti institute, and played with the I Pomeriggi Musicali orchestra in Milan before buying his first saxophone. He also holds a degree in economics. Acquaviva conducts the Filarmonica Mousike wind orchestra on Gianluigi Trovesi's ECM album Profumo Di Violetta (2008), where Discogs credits Chiapperini on clarinet in the orchestra's clarinet section. In jazz he became first saxophonist of the Creative Jazz Orchestra workshop founded and directed by Cavallanti, and won scholarships at the Sant'Anna Arresi seminars (best saxophonist and best music project) and at the 40th edition of Siena Jazz (as a saxophonist).

Cavallanti's circle remains his main working environment. Discogs credits him on Cavallanti's Sounds Of Hope (2015, with the Milano Contemporary Art Ensemble, on bass clarinet, alto saxophone and flute), on Shadows (2019) and A Wall Of Sound (2025) with the A World Of Sound quartet, and on Experience Nexus! (2017), the album of Nexus, the group Cavallanti co-leads with Tononi. In 2018 he was one of the horns on Tononi & The Ornettians' Forms And Sounds - Air Sculptures, a celebration of the music of Ornette Coleman, alongside Daniele Cavallanti, Alberto Mandarini and violinist Emanuele Parrini.

As a leader he first appears on Discogs with the Nido Workshop album (2012, dEN Records), the Electric! Electric! session (2013) and the No Pair quartet's Chaos And Order (2014), for which he is credited as writer. His Extemporary Vision Ensemble made its debut with Our Redemption (Rudi Records, 2015), recorded live at La Scighera in Milan in March 2014 with all the music written by Chiapperini and a piece titled "Remembering Max"; a review summary describes the album as a tribute to saxophonist Massimo Urbani. Its follow-up The Big Earth (2018, Rudi Records) was recorded live at the same club on 26 April 2016 by twelve credited musicians, among them bassist Andrea Grossi, and rebuilds the Easter processional music of Molfetta, in Puglia, through Chiapperini's compositions and arrangements. In between came Paradigm Shift (Aut Records, 2016), a seven-track trio album by his InSight group with pianist Simone Quatrana and guitarist Simone Lobina, and his WE3 trio with bassist Luca Pissavini (on violone) and drummer Stefano Grasso released a self-titled album on Aut Records in 2021, described by the label as inspired by John Surman's trio with Barre Phillips and Stu Martin.

Two thematic albums for Caligola Records bracket the recent years. On the Bare Rocks and Glaciers (2021) is an 18-track suite for a sextet of clarinets, trumpet, cornet, bassoon, baritone saxophone and violin, with no piano, bass or drums, recorded in July 2020 in a church in Parre, near Bergamo, and built from Alpine choir songs, Pergolesi, Grieg and original pieces about mountain warfare and the Battle of Nikolajewka. Transmigration (Splasc(H) Records, 2023) is a nonet recorded live on 11 December 2021, which Musica Jazz critic Sandro Cerini praised for balancing written form and free playing. Italian Mottetto (Caligola, 2026) is a quartet on bass clarinet, voice, violin and Andrea Grossi's double bass that reworks Caccini's music; the Kathodik webzine gave it 8 out of 10, and the group played it at Casa del Jazz in Rome on 20 April 2024, before the recording sessions of 2024 and 2025.

Outside his own bands he is a sideman on Roger Rota's Octo (Aut Records, 2018) and Reality In Illusion (Setola Di Maiale, 2020), the Antonio Fusco Sextet's Suite For Motian (2014), the AB Quartet of pianist Antonio Bonazzo (Outsiding, 2017, plus two later releases), and Andrea Ciceri Esatomic's Fisse (Aut Records, 2025). His official biography also names him as a member of the Angiolo Tarocchi Jazz Orchestra and lists a Marcos Quartet. He also has a side career in experimental rock: Discogs lists him on four releases by the progressive-rock band NichelOdeon and the related InSonar (2010, two in 2013, and 2014), which sit outside the jazz catalogue documented here.

Chiapperini writes and arranges for the woodwind family first. Bass clarinet is the main voice on Paradigm Shift and Italian Mottetto; he moves to baritone saxophone and flute for the Transmigration nonet, and leaves out the rhythm section entirely on On the Bare Rocks and Glaciers. His albums tend to be organized around a subject rather than a set of tunes: a region's ceremonial music, a war and its songs, a Renaissance singer-composer.

He names Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, John Surman and Pharoah Sanders as references, with the music of the 1960s and 1970s as the anchor of his writing. The Surman link is audible in the WE3 trio, described by its label as modelled on Surman's trio with Barre Phillips and Stu Martin, and in the way Transmigration sets composed ensemble writing against extended solos. That balance of form and freedom is what his reviewers most often single out, and it comes straight from the Cavallanti and Tononi school of Milanese free jazz in which he trained.