Gavino Mele is a French horn player from Sassari, Sardinia, born in 1963, and the founder and president of one of Italy's longest continuously operating jazz orchestras. In 1989 he founded the Blue Note Orchestra, renamed the Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna (OJS) in 1996, and through the Associazione Blue Note Orchestra that runs it he has produced its concerts, its recordings and an international composition competition ever since. The orchestra's own site describes it as one of the rare Italian orchestras to have operated without interruption since its founding, with more than 100 productions across swing, contemporary jazz, fusion, Italian song, world music and classical-contemporary repertoire. In August 2025 the City of Sassari gave the orchestra its "Candeliere d'Oro Speciale" award.

His training came in two stages. He took a horn diploma at the Luigi Canepa Conservatory in Sassari in 1984, with top marks, studying under Umberto Musio, and played in classical and wind ensembles first: Ottoni di Sassari from 1981, the Accademia Strumentale di Fiati from 1983, the Italian Youth Symphony Orchestra (selected 1984) and the orchestra of La Fenice in Venice in 1985-86. Jazz followed alongside. He completed a professional training course for jazz orchestra run by the Siena Jazz association in 1995 and took a jazz diploma at the Canepa Conservatory in 1997 under Furio Di Castri. He now teaches horn at the same conservatory, alongside courses on organizing musical events and live-performance law.

The orchestra grew out of a period of ferment in Sardinian jazz, when young conservatory-trained players were starting small ensembles and festivals. In interviews Mele credits the double bassist, composer and conductor Bruno Tommaso as an early mentor, and recalls advice not to lose sight of Sardinian roots, which fed into "Scrivere in Jazz" (Writing in Jazz), the composition competition he launched in 1991. It asks composers from anywhere to write for the OJS while engaging with Sardinian musical tradition; by 2026 it had reached its 19th edition, and a 2023 interview put the total at about 1,000 participating composers across the first 17 editions. The orchestra's unusual color is part of the pitch: horns, flutes, clarinets and tuba alongside the usual big-band sections, in a base ensemble of eighteen players.

Mele has never released an album under his own name. His documented recordings come in two strands. From 2000 he was the horn player in the Proxima Centauri Orchestra, the last ensemble assembled by Giorgio Gaslini, and appears on its two Soul Note albums, Enigma (2001) and Urban Griot (2003), and on the Gaslini retrospective Suite 1994-2008 (2012), alongside Achille Succi, Alberto Mandarini and Daniele Di Gregorio. The second strand is his own orchestra: he is credited on horn in Gaslini's Sacred Concert / Jazz Te Deum (2002, Soul Note), recorded in a Sassari church with Paolo Fresu as trumpet soloist and Maria Pia De Vito among the voices, and in Gaslini's Il Brutto Anatroccolo (2005), with Dante Casu and Alessandro Zolo in the orchestra on both. Outside those two circles he played horn on guitarist Roberto Spadoni's nine-piece Panta Rei (2007), with Ettore Fioravanti and Daniele Tittarelli, and on the Valencia-based Latino Blanco Band's Gerry Mulligan tribute Around Mulligan (2007).

In recent years he has moved to the podium and the small-ensemble book. He directed the orchestra on Wide Sounds (2022) and on the 2025 Bertas collaboration Domani è un altro giorno, and the orchestra's own discography lists him on horn in Jazz Requiem Mass (2022, composed and conducted by Bruno Tommaso), in the Blue Note Brass Sextet's La musica di Horace Silver (2025) and in the Blue Note Jazz Ensemble's Skylark (2026). He also directs the Swing Era Jazz Band, an 11-piece group drawn from the orchestra, and conducts the orchestra's laboratory ensemble.

Mele's identity is unusual for a jazz profile: he is a conservatory-trained classical hornist by degree and teaching post, and a jazz orchestra builder by career. His discography is small, all sideman work, and one Discogs credit, the 1999 Sardinian folk-and-choir album Andiras by Paolo Zicconi, sits outside jazz. Every other credit is jazz, and the orchestra he built is the center of his working life.

Mele's contribution is as an organizer and orchestral voice more than a soloist. The French horn is a rare color in jazz, and the OJS's instrumentation, with horns, flutes, clarinets and tuba, is built around that kind of timbre rather than the standard big-band template. The orchestra's repertoire runs from Gaslini's sacred and theatrical commissions to Gil Evans's Porgy and Bess suite (recorded with Paolo Fresu and David Linx), a Gerry Mulligan tribute, Horace Silver arrangements and the Bruno Tommaso Jazz Requiem Mass. His training is classical, with a 1997 jazz diploma under Furio Di Castri, and Bruno Tommaso remains his most-cited influence. In interviews he describes jazz as a language that lets a musician use an infinite palette of colors, and the I-Jazz interview presents his approach as jazz that is music for everyone.