Francesco Del Prete is a violinist and composer from Campi Salentina, in the Salento peninsula of Puglia, who plays a five-string electric-acoustic violin wired to loop stations and effects pedals so that one player can build a full arrangement alone. He calls the technique ViolinOrchestra, and it is the thread running through his solo and studio records. He started the violin at ten and took his diploma in 1996 at the Conservatorio "Tito Schipa" in Lecce, under Ennio Catanese, then earned a second-level degree in violin there in 2008. His own accounts describe a classical start followed by a turn to improvised music and jazz that became central to how he works.

From 2003 to 2008 he was the official violinist of La Notte della Taranta, the Salento folk festival, where his biographies place him on stage with guests including Stewart Copeland, Lucio Dalla, Francesco De Gregori, Franco Battiato and Mauro Pagani. In the same years he played in Salento pizzica and world-music groups: Italian Wikipedia's entry for Arakne Mediterranea, founded in 1993 in Martignano, lists him on violin and cabasa, and his biographies add Tarantula Rubra, Demotika Orkestar, Nidi d'Arac and Manigold, with touring in Japan, France, Slovenia, Germany and Greece. His first solo album, Corpi d'Arco (2009, per his site), was made for violin and pedalboard alone.

His records fall into three strands. With the singer Lara Ingrosso, who records as Arale, he leads Respiro, an electro-pop duo whose albums are A forma di ali (2015), UnPoPositivo (2019) and Jungle Gum (2021). His jazz strand is the Francesco Del Prete Jazz Ensemble, whose Colibrì (Workin' Label, 2018) pairs original pieces with jazz standards by Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Paul Desmond, with the saxophonist Emanuele Coluccia, the pianist Filippo Bubbico, the bassist Giampaolo Laurentaci and the drummer Dario Congedo. Folk Bulletin's review by Gianni Giusti presents the album as his "jazz side."

The third strand is ViolinOrchestra, which his own site lists as his main focus and which he records for Controvento, an imprint of the Italian independent label Dodicilune, whose catalog is largely jazz. Cor Cordis (May 18, 2021, catalog CTV160) is nine compositions with Ingrosso, the cellist Anna Carla Del Prete, the drummer Diego Martino, Coluccia on sopranino saxophone, Bubbico on synthesizer and the trombonist Gaetano Carrozzo. Maria Giovanna Barletta reviewed it in il manifesto on August 14, 2021, and Musica Jazz premiered the video for "Tempo" on March 10, 2022. All About Jazz's review, published in September 2022, described its "imaginary folklore" as more chamber-like than jazzy, a fair description of a record that Del Prete says is built on electronics he improvises over. Rohesia Violinorchestra (November 22, 2022, CTV163) is five originals, each in two versions, written to accompany five wines from the Cantele winery in Puglia, with the cellists Marco Schiavone and Anna Carla Del Prete, the harpist Angela Cosi, Coluccia on fortepiano and the guitarist Roberto "Bob" Mangialardo. Musica Jazz's Alceste Ayroldi interviewed him about it, and Del Prete said that 99% of his compositions are improvisations.

Divertissement (March 22, 2024, Filibusta Records) collects eleven original pieces on all-violin arrangements that range across swing, rock, prog, Balkan, classical and pop, with guests including the trumpeter Alessandro Dell'Anna, Coluccia and the vocalist Francesca Occhineri. He has also appeared on Elisabetta Guido's The Good Storyteller (Koiné Records, 2016) and, as featured artist on "Madrid," on Tuma's Sereno Variabile (Romolo Dischi, 2025). On October 15, 2022 he gave a concert-lesson on the electroacoustic violin in Rome.

Del Prete is an improviser first and a genre-crosser second. His records treat the violin as a one-person orchestra, layering loops and effects and then soloing over them, and he told Musica Jazz that most of his compositions begin as improvisations. His stated influences span jazz violinists, classical composers, world music and contemporary pop, and he describes one Cor Cordis track as a capriccio expressing his love of jazz in general and hard bop in particular. Another track reflects his interest in Balkan music and odd meters.

Only one of his records, Colibrì, is a small-group jazz date built around standards such as "Donna Lee," "Au Privave," "Oleo" and "Take Five," played with saxophone, piano, bass and drums. Elsewhere his jazz shows up as harmonic language and improvisation inside electronic, chamber-like and Salento folk-inflected settings, which is why All About Jazz heard Cor Cordis as chamber music with jazz in it. His two other identities, the Taranta violinist and the electro-pop duo Respiro, sit alongside the jazz work rather than inside it.