Francesco Lento is a trumpeter and flugelhorn player born in 1986 in Macomer, in the province of Nuoro, Sardinia. According to his biography on the Tosky Records site, he began on the trumpet with his father as a child and played in the local town band, then graduated in trumpet from the Conservatory of Sassari. He went on to play in the Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna under Giovanni Agostino Frassetto, where the same biography says he met visiting musicians including Bruno Tommaso and Bob Mintzer. It adds that he held a paid seat in a lyric-theatre orchestra and gave up symphonic work to concentrate on jazz, drawn to bebop and hard bop and learning by transcribing hundreds of solos. The biography names Fabrizio Bosso and Flavio Boltro among the trumpeters he worked with; that is a stated connection in the biography, not a release credit.

In 2009 he moved to Rome, where the biography says he began playing with Paolo Damiani, Roberto Gatto, Gegè Munari, Max Ionata and Marco Ferri. His earliest Discogs credit is Damiani's Pane e Tempesta (EGEA, recorded June 2010), on which he plays trumpet and flugelhorn in Damiani's band, and the Musica Jazz compilation Top Jazz 2010 carries a Damiani track from the same band with Lento and the drummer Alessandro Paternesi. The next few years put him on record with the pianist Luca Mannutza's Sound Six (My Music, recorded November 2011), the Marco Valeri Quartet (The Apple, 2013) and the Auand label's ensemble The Auanders, whose Live in Pisa was recorded on October 4, 2012 and also features Francesco Bigoni, Francesco Bearzatti, Beppe Scardino, Federico Pierantoni and Francesco Ponticelli.

His one co-billed record is Prestazione (Parco della Musica Records, 2014), credited on Discogs to Daniele Tittarelli, the trio Fresh Fish and Lento. It was recorded live on March 21, 2013 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, with Domenico Sanna on piano and Rhodes, Luca Fattorini on bass and Marco Valeri on drums, and it holds seven original pieces. Tittarelli is the musician he appears beside most often: the two are credited together on at least nine releases, among them The Apple, Bird Calling, Rebel Band, Hardcore Chamber Music, Noisy Games and Cyclic Signs.

Several groups recur in his discography. With the guitarist Francesco Diodati's Yellow Squeeds he recorded Flow, Home. (Auand, 2015) and Never the Same (Auand, 2019), in a lineup with Enrico Morello on drums and Enrico Zanisi on piano. He is the trumpeter and flugelhorn player in Federica Michisanti's Horn Trio, with Bigoni on tenor saxophone and clarinet and no chordal instrument, on Silent Rides (Filibusta, 2018, ranked seventh among the best Italian albums of 2018 in the Top Jazz poll) and Jeux de Couleurs (Parco della Musica Records, 2020). Morello's leader debut Cyclic Signs (Auand, 2021) is a quartet of Lento, Tittarelli, the bassist Matteo Bortone and Morello. He also plays on two albums by the guitarist Manlio Maresca and on the Akashmani Ensemble sessions of Adriano Clemente.

As a section or guest player he is credited on a run of larger projects. He is one of four trumpeters, with Bosso, Boltro and Till Brönner, on the vinyl and digital editions of Nicola Conte's Free Souls (Schema, 2014); on Enrico Pieranunzi's My Songbook (2016), alongside Rosario Giuliani; on Gatto's Nino! (Casa del Jazz, 2016) and Giovanni Guidi's Rebel Band (Casa del Jazz, 2016); in the Francesco Cafiso Nonet's We Play for Tips, recorded live on June 24, 2017 at the Vittoria Jazz Festival in Ragusa with Alessandro Presti; on Riccardo Fassi's Tankio Band tribute to Frank Zappa (2017); on Franco D'Andrea's Sketches of the 20th Century (Parco della Musica Records, 2023, recorded June 2022); on the pianist Ethan Iverson's Bud Powell in the 21st Century (Sunnyside, 2021), recorded live at Umbria Jazz Winter #26 in Orvieto in December 2018; and on the second disc of Bill Frisell's Orchestras (Blue Note, 2024), tracks 1 to 7. He also appears on Mario Raja's Bird Calling (2014) and the Tosky Records quartet album 'S Wonderful (2014) by the saxophonist Marco Guidolotti.

Beyond the records, promoter and festival biographies describe him as one of the most appreciated trumpeters on the Italian scene and name the Massimo Nunzi orchestra, the Mario Raja Big Band and Michisanti's Horn Trio among his ensembles, with appearances at Nuoro Jazz, Orvieto Jazz Winter, Time in Jazz, April Jazz in Finland, Villa Celimontana and the Nepi Jazz Festival. A 2017 festival page adds that he has played at Ronnie Scott's in London and on tours from Greece to the United Arab Emirates, and credits Paolo Fresu with naming him among the best talents in contemporary Italian jazz; those are the promoters' statements, not verified independently. The same biographies list Mario Biondi, Zucchero, Renato Zero and Claudio Baglioni among Italian pop artists he has worked with, an activity outside the jazz catalogue documented on this page.

He remains tied to Sardinia. The Associazione Blue Note Orchestra site lists him among the trumpet and flugelhorn players of the Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna's 2025 base roster; the orchestra's saxophonist Dante Casu also has a profile here. In August 2026 he was announced with the guitarist Antonio Floris in the Antonio Floris - Francesco Lento 4tet (with Matteo Marongiu on bass and Cesare Mangiacavallo on drums) at Quartu Sant'Elena, and he has led a masterclass with a concert-lecture at the Centro Servizi Culturali in Macomer, organized with the town's Civic Music School.

Lento's stated grounding is bebop and hard bop, and Discogs tags his earliest ensemble work, such as Mannutza's My Music, as Hard Bop, Contemporary Jazz and Modal. His discography then spreads across post-bop and contemporary settings: the free-leaning Yellow Squeeds albums, the chordless horn-trio writing of Michisanti, the quartet compositions of Morello and Maresca, and big-band and large-ensemble parts in the Cafiso Nonet, the Iverson orchestra and D'Andrea's ensemble. Discogs classifies 30 of his 31 listed rows as Jazz, 19 of them with the style Contemporary Jazz.

He is chiefly a sideman and ensemble voice. Discogs lists no release under his sole name, and the only record on which he is billed beside a leader is the co-billed Prestazione. The one non-jazz credit under his name, a 2023 house single by Djmanuel, is not attributed to him here because nothing ties it to the trumpeter. His pop and session work is described in his biographies but sits outside the recorded jazz catalogue.