Francesco Diodati is a Rome-born guitarist and composer (b. 1983) who has been a fixture of trumpeter Enrico Rava's bands since the mid-2010s while leading a string of groups of his own. His biography says he took up the guitar at twelve, and he completed the In.Ja.M. master program at Siena Jazz between 2008 and 2010, with lessons from Kurt Rosenwinkel, John Abercrombie, Hein Van De Geyn, Jeff Ballard, Drew Gress, Seamus Blake and Roberto Cecchetto. A scholarship took him to the New School in New York in 2009, and a profile on SmallsLive credits him with wins at the Barga Jazz competition in 2005 and the Fara Music Fest in 2009. Per his biography, the Italian magazine Jazzit's annual poll named him best guitarist of the year in 2013, 2014 and 2015. His site also lists him as a jazz guitar teacher at the Conservatorio Casella in L'Aquila and a facilitator of research workshops at Siena Jazz.

His leader debut was Purple Bra (Auand, 2010), a quartet record with saxophonist Francesco Bigoni, bassist Francesco Ponticelli and drummer Ermanno Baron, a group he calls Neko; All About Jazz's Mark Corroto reviewed it. The same quartet made Need Something Strong (Auand, September 10, 2012), with liner notes by Rava. The Auand label also released the two albums by his quintet Yellow Squeeds, Flow, Home. (2015) and Never The Same (2019), on which trumpeter Francesco Lento, tuba player Glauco Benedetti, pianist Enrico Zanisi and drummer Enrico Morello play alongside him; the second album closes with Thelonious Monk's "Straight No Chaser" folded into an original.

The Rava relationship is the thread through his sideman career. Diodati is the guitarist on Wild Dance (ECM, 2015), the quartet album with Morello, bassist Gabriele Evangelista and trombonist Gianluca Petrella as guest, produced by Manfred Eicher. He then appears on Edizione Speciale (ECM, 2021), Rava's Special Edition band with pianist Giovanni Guidi and tenor saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti, and on Fearless Five (Parco Della Musica Records, 2024), with Ponticelli, trombonist Matteo Paggi and drummer Evita Polidoro. He is also credited on the 2017 Rava concert film Note Necessarie. He is also a member of Paolo Fresu's Heroes, a David Bowie tribute billed to Fresu, singer Petra Magoni, Petrella, Diodati, Ponticelli and drummer Christian Meyer (Tǔk Music, 2021).

His own groups are many, and his site names five as main projects: Oliphantre, MAT, tellKujira, Weave4 and Abhra. MAT is the trio with saxophonist Marcello Allulli and drummer Ermanno Baron, whose albums include Mat (Jazzit, 2015) and In Front Of (Tǔk Music, 2021, with Fresu as executive producer). Abhra is the Julien Pontvianne project built on Thoreau's texts (Abhra, 2016; Seven Poems On Water, 2022). Oliphantre, with the French vocalist Leïla Martial and drummer Stefano Tamborrino, released its self-titled album on Auand on November 18, 2022; Diodati wrote the music and produced most of it, and Jazz Views reviewed it. Weave4 is a quartet with Bigoni, pianist Benoît Delbecq and drummer Steve Argüelles (Weave4, Parco Della Musica Records, 2023; La Gomma Di Dante, EGEA, 2026). Chloros Phyllon (Tǔk Music, 2019) is an electroacoustic quartet with the cellist Leila Shirvani, her sister the pianist Sara Shirvani and Morello, produced by Fresu. tellKujira, a quartet with cellist Francesco Guerri, is tagged Rock on Discogs. Elsewhere he recorded in the trio Plutino with the American drummer Bobby Previte and baritone saxophonist Beppe Scardino (2012), on Erica Mou's Auand pop album Tienimi Il Posto (2015), and on Glauco Venier's Suite Per Pier Paolo (2022).

Diodati writes and plays like an improviser who treats the guitar as one voice among electronics. Discogs credits him with loops and effects on several records, including Marcello Allulli's Hermanos (2012), Matteo Bortone's Travelers (2013) and the Bowie tribute, and his biography describes a spontaneous approach to melody and acoustic sound joined with a clever use of electronics and effects. Discogs tags most of his catalog as Contemporary Jazz, with Free Jazz and Avant-garde Jazz tags on Flow, Home. and Weave4. Press descriptions of Oliphantre add hip-hop, rock and punk textures to jazz improvisation, and the tellKujira records sit closer to post-rock and art rock than to jazz. In an interview with Il Giornale della Musica in January 2019, he described wanting his bandmates to be vulnerable and to explore collectively rather than present the music as an exhibition.

His catalog is jazz at its core: 43 of the 46 rows on his Discogs page carry a Jazz genre tag, and his recording base is jazz labels such as Auand, ECM, Tǔk Music and Parco Della Musica.