Eugenio Roberto Antonio Telesforo, known as Gegè, was born in Foggia, in Puglia, on October 14, 1961. He was on the radio before he could vote: in 1977 he started "Dimensione Jazz" on Radio Foggia, which ran until 1979, and in 1981 he moved to Rai Radio 1 with "Tra la Gente." The broadcaster Renzo Arbore, who was then building the television shows that would make him a household name in Italy, launched him as a percussionist and singer. Telesforo plays percussion on the album from Arbore's late-night show Quelli della notte (1985) and appears on Arbore's Prima Che Sia Troppo Tardi (1986), and the collaboration lasted: he is credited on percussion and voice on Arbore's L'Orchestra Italiana at Carnegie Hall in New York (2006), and his later Rai television work includes Appresso alla musica (2022-2024).

The television profile ran alongside a steady jazz one. His first record under his own name on Discogs is a 1985 Italo-disco single, "I Do It For Love," and in 1991 he released a self-titled debut LP on Gala Records (its opening track, "Cu Cu? ..Ba!", also came out as a 12-inch dance single). In 1987 he had sung on drummer Roberto Gatto's album Notes, alongside the Rome rhythm-section players who would become his regular company. The turning point was his connection with the American pianist, singer and producer Ben Sidran, whose Go Jazz label was then documenting Italian and American players together. Sidran produced Gegè And The Boparazzi (Go Jazz, 1993), recorded in Rome and New York with a band drawn largely from the Italian jazz scene: Stefano Di Battista on alto saxophone, Rita Marcotulli and Danilo Rea on keyboards, Enzo Pietropaoli on bass and Roberto Gatto on drums, with the American bassist Ugonna Okegwo, tenor saxophonist Bob Berg, and guest vocals from Jon Hendricks (tracks 5 and 8) and Clark Terry (trumpet and vocals, track 8). Sidran's production page says that Hendricks judged him the genuine article as a scat singer, and that Dizzy Gillespie endorsed his reading of "He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped"; those two endorsements come from Sidran's own description of the record and are not independently documented.

Gegé And The Mother Tongue (1996) pushed the same band-of-friends idea into funk: Sidran produced with Paul Peterson and Telesforo as co-producers, Bob Malach played tenor saxophone, and Hendricks and Terry returned for "Looky Hear." The live album PFL Pure Funk Live (recorded in Bari in September 1996, reissued by Go Jazz in 1998 as 100% Off!) documented his own touring band, and We Couldn't Be Happier (Go Jazz, 2002) gathered 19 credited musicians, among them Dario Deidda on bass and Di Battista on soprano saxophone. In 2003 he and Dee Dee Bridgewater recorded the song "Opopomoz Blues" for the animated film Opopomoz; Discogs also credits him as producer of one track on Bridgewater's All Of Me (Fonit Cetra, 1992).

From 2007 the Groove Master Edition label has carried most of his catalog. Love And Other Contradictions (2007, credited to the Gegè Telesforo Groovinators) has Fabio Zeppetella on guitar; So Cool (2009) pairs him with saxophonist Max Ionata and Deidda; and he is co-billed on Ionata's Inspiration (Albore Jazz, 2009) alongside trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso. Nu Joy (2012), FunSlowRide (2016, a collaboration with Sidran) and Songbook (2018) followed, and in 2020 he returned to writing in Italian for Il Mondo In Testa, with a guest vocal from Daniela Spalletta among others (documented by press and streaming credits, not by a Discogs credit). In 2021 he sang on and co-arranged Brontolo, a double CD with pianist Enrico Intra, and in 2024 Big Mama Legacy came out worldwide on the American label Ropeadope: a tribute to Rome's Big Mama music club with a band drawn from the emerging Italian generation, and guest pianists Danilo Rea and Domenico Sanna. Nicola Gaeta's review in Musica Jazz praised the record's ensemble and its openness to soul, funk and African influences.

Outside the studio, Telesforo won the Jazzit Award for best male vocalist every year from 2010 to 2018, according to his official biography. He teaches vocal improvisation as "Vocal Jazz Concept" master classes at Rome's Saint Louis Music Center and has taught at the Venice Voice Academy in Los Angeles since 2012. He is a UNICEF Good Will Ambassador, has been a City Angels ambassador since 2023, and, per his biography, represented Italian culture at the Shanghai Expo alongside Stefano Bollani and Paolo Fresu.

Telesforo's instrument is the scat voice, and his stated project is a jazz-funk one: scat syllables riding on a groove-driven rhythm section rather than on a swing walk. He brings the same approach to teaching, under the name "Vocal Jazz Concept." His records draw a clear line from the bebop-vocal tradition of Jon Hendricks and Clark Terry (both on his early Go Jazz sessions, and Fever, Mumbles and "He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped" all appear on Gegè And The Boparazzi) through 1970s soul-jazz and funk (We Couldn't Be Happier, So Cool) to the small-group, Blue Note-inflected sound and African rhythm of Big Mama Legacy. He is also a drummer and keyboardist on his own records, with producer or co-producer credits on Mother Tongue, PFL Pure Funk Live, We Couldn't Be Happier, Love And Other Contradictions and Big Mama Legacy.

Any honest account has to weigh the second career. Telesforo is at least as well known in Italy as a television and radio host, through Renzo Arbore's programs, his own Radio Capital and Radio 24 shows, and a run of Rai broadcasts, as he is as a singer. His jazz standing rests on the record: 55 of the 83 releases Discogs lists under his name carry a Jazz genre tag, every album Discogs lists as his own since 1991 is a jazz or jazz-funk date (his only non-jazz billed releases are two early dance singles and an animated-film title song), his albums appear on Go Jazz, Albore Jazz and Ropeadope as well as Groove Master Edition, and he has a page in the All About Jazz musicians directory.