Francesco Marchese is a Palermo tenor saxophonist who holds the first tenor chair in the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana (OJS), the big band run by the city's Brass Group. The orchestra was founded in the early 1970s by Ignazio Garsia as the Brass Group Big Band and, in its own words, is the first and only permanent Italian jazz orchestra with public participation. Its official page lists Marchese on tenor saxophone, with soprano saxophone and clarinet as second instruments, and other press material adds flute. He plays in an orchestra of approximately 30 active musicians divided into saxophones, trombones, trumpets and rhythm section.

His place in that saxophone section is documented on record. On Music & Wine Live (2007, Duplison), a live crossover project pairing the Sicilian winery Donnafugata with the Brass Group and the visiting American musicians Eliot Zigmund (drums) and Bill Moring (bass), Marchese is one of five saxophonists credited, alongside Antonino Pedone, Gaetano Agrò, Gaspare Palazzolo and Orazio Maugeri. Discogs also credits him on tenor saxophone on Nick La Rocca - The Last Records (C.R. Records), a Dixieland-repertoire album by pianist Claudio Lo Cascio's Sicilia Jazz Big Band, where he shares the reed section with tenor saxophonist Gian Piero Lo Piccolo. Two trumpeters on that record, Vito Giordano and Silvio Barbara, and a third, Giovanni Calderone, also appear in the brass section of Music & Wine Live.

Marchese also teaches. A 2006 biography of the Sicilian saxophonist Giuseppe Di Carlo describes a summer masterclass given by "maestro Francesco Marchese," identified there as a teacher at the Brass Group's jazz school in Palermo and first tenor saxophonist of the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana. In 2025 he was a featured guest on "Tintarella di Luna," a track on Plays Musica Italiana by Mimmo Cafiero and the Open Jazz Orchestra, credited alongside Francesco Guaiana and the Open Jazz School Band; the release is dated March 22, 2025.

His soloist role continues in the orchestra's current concerts. The Orchestra Jazz Siciliana's September 24, 2026 program at Palermo's Teatro Massimo, conducted by Domenico Riina, lists Marchese as the saxophone soloist on Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed," in a lineup of soloists that also includes saxophonists Orazio Maugeri, Gaspare Palazzolo, Antonino Oddo and Claudio Giambruno, trumpeters Alberto Anguzza and Vito Giordano, and flugelhorn players Faro Riina and Giacomo Tantillo. The repertoire spanned Ernie Wilkins, Quincy Jones and Bernard Herrmann, closing with Eduardo di Capua's classic melody.

The orchestra he plays in has a substantial history. In 1991 it gave the European premiere of Charles Mingus's Epitaph under Gunther Schuller, and in February 1996 it performed the first live world performance of the George Gershwin and Gil Evans transcription of Porgy and Bess, also under Schuller. Marchese is a section player and teacher rather than a leader: he has two Discogs-listed credits and no albums under his own name. No birth date, birthplace or formal training history for him is publicly documented, and he has no Wikipedia, AllMusic or All About Jazz entry.

Marchese works as a big-band section leader: the first tenor chair carries the lead voice of the saxophone section, and his second instruments (soprano saxophone, flute and clarinet) are the doublings a big-band reed player commonly covers. His documented credits span three settings: a modern Sicilian jazz orchestra sharing a stage with American guest rhythm players (Music & Wine Live), a Dixieland-repertoire big band (Nick La Rocca - The Last Records), and Italian pop-standard jazz arrangements with a student ensemble ("Tintarella di Luna"). His teaching at the Brass Group's jazz school connects him to the same big-band model the orchestra has practiced since the 1970s.