Giorgio Albanese was born in Ostuni, in the Brindisi province of Puglia, on February 24, 1986, and took up the accordion at age eight. Competitions came early and kept coming: his own biography counts more than 30 national and international prizes, among them first prize in the Italia Award for jazz accordion, first prize at the national Roland V-Accordion festival, and second prizes at the World Accordion Championship and the Trophée Mondial de l'Accordéon. By that biography he represented Italy at the World Accordion Championships six times. In May 2009 the Corriere del Mezzogiorno called him one of the most talented new Italian jazz artists.

His formal jazz training began at the Niccolò Piccinni Conservatory in Bari, where he took a degree in jazz music in 2009 with first-class honors and distinction, studying with saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano. He then studied contemporary improvisation at the Nino Rota Conservatory in Monopoli (2012) and completed a master's degree in classical and contemporary accordion in 2017. According to his festival biography, Berklee College of Music teachers heard him at the 2009 Umbria Jazz Festival, named him the best talent there and offered a full scholarship; he arrived at Berklee in January 2018 and graduated in 2023, studying jazz composition, film scoring and performance and playing in the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. His teachers there included Danilo Pérez, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman and John Patitucci, along with bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz.

In Puglia he worked with the region's improvising community. He founded the Apulian Lab Orchestra in 2015 to combine music with visual art, theatre and dance, and in 2015 he was the accordion soloist in the MinAfrìc Orchestra on Pino Minafra's MinAfrìc (Sud Music), alongside Gaetano Partipilo and Carlo Actis Dato. His first album as a leader, Vento di Maestrale (Skycap Records, May 6, 2016), is a quintet record with American soprano saxophonist Steve Potts, pianist Gianni Lenoci, bassist Danilo Gallo and drummer Pippo "Ark" D'Ambrosio, with a twelve-piece orchestra joining for the 22-minute "Suite del Maestrale." All six pieces are his own compositions. In 2017 he wrote ONE+ONE, described on his site as among the first contemporary compositions for accordion and electronics.

His biography lists collaborations with John Tchicai, William Parker, Karl Berger, Luciana Souza, Steve Potts, Gianluigi Trovesi, Eugenio Colombo, Mirko Guerrini, Michele Rabbia, Livio Minafra and Gianni Lenoci, and concerts in more than 66 countries. He also teaches, giving accordion lessons, jazz-accordion masterclasses and improvisation workshops, and is listed as an accordion instructor at the ORCHESTRA Music Hub in Bari. Since 2018 he has been based in the United States while keeping ties to Puglia.

That double life is the subject of his second album, When Time Slipped Away (Dodicilune, ED600, released March 11, 2026). It was recorded on May 16 and 17, 2024 at The Record & Co in Boston and mixed and mastered that November by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Recording in New York. Albanese wrote and arranged all seven pieces and produced the record with Maurizio Bizzochetti and Dodicilune. The band is an octet of accordion, two saxophonists (Ethan Klotz, Juanito Saus), trombonist Tino Erdes, vocalist Mahya Hamedi, pianist Domas Zeromskas, bassist Stefano Battaglia (a bassist, not the pianist of the same name) and drummer Nitzan Birnbaum, with cellist Queralt Giralt, flutist Yuval Agam and percussionist Rafael Heredia Horimoto guesting on selected tracks. Jazz Journal, Doppiojazz, Jazz'halo and Spettakolo all reviewed it in 2026. He brought the music to Ostuni for the Teatro Madre Festival.

Albanese writes for the accordion as a compositional voice, not a folk-color instrument. Reviewers of When Time Slipped Away describe the accordion as the thread that holds the lines together, and single out modal melodies, odd meters (7/4 and 6/4 are named in Doppiojazz), polyphonic development, and Apulian references that are varied and fragmented rather than quoted. "Chi-chi" opens on a modal groove and a singable tune; "Synthetic Happiness" repeats an odd-meter figure; "Meta Blues" is a blues seen through a European lens; "Get There" nods to 1960s and 1970s language without quoting it. Jazz'halo finds the record balanced between Mediterranean melody and jazz language.

Vento di Maestrale sits further out. It is tagged avant-garde and experimental, credits synthesizers to Albanese, Lenoci and Gallo, and closes on a 22-minute suite for quintet and orchestra. Both albums include a piece titled "Schizofrenie." His work with Pino Minafra's MinAfrìc Orchestra, which Discogs files under free jazz and contemporary jazz, comes from the same Puglia improvising circle. His stated interests reach from free improvisation and world music to modern tango, theatre, dance and cinema. His site also lists a solo accordion program and a jazz quintet as his two main performing formats.