Giovanni Ceccarelli is a pianist, composer, arranger and teacher, born in Fabriano, in the Marche region, on November 25, 1967. He began piano lessons at seven and turned to jazz at thirteen, after hearing records by Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans in his father's collection. According to his official biography he taught himself to improvise and later studied with the pianists Eddie Wied, Rita Marcotulli, Mike Melillo, Franco D'Andrea, Stefano Battaglia and Enrico Pieranunzi, with the arrangers Bruno Tommaso and Giancarlo Gazzani, and with Dave Liebman and Jack Walrath. He attended the Terni Jazz University, the Siena Jazz courses and the annual meeting of the International Association of Schools of Jazz. In 1984 and 1985 he lived for a year in Portland, Oregon, studying with Wied, sitting in on the Cleveland High School jazz band class and playing with the Oregon Youthsound Big Band. In the early 2000s he added classical piano study with Emilio Procaccini and North Indian music theory and tabla with Aki Montoya, and in 2022 he earned the French national diploma as a jazz piano professor.

He started working professionally in Rome, where he lived for ten years and learned the standards repertoire in trios and with visiting soloists. His official biography names the bassists Mauro Battisti, Rosario Bonaccorso, Stefano Cantarano and Giordano Pietroni and the drummers Carlo Battisti, Massimo Manzi and Francesco Vitale among his trio partners. Two singers gave him a steady chair. With Tiziana Ghiglioni, Discogs credits him on Tenco In Jazz (Philology, 1998) and on the Duke Ellington songbook My Essential Duke Ellington (Philology, 1998), where the bassist Attilio Zanchi and the drummer Gianni Cazzola complete the rhythm section on the first record and are credited on the second. With the singer Ada Montellanico he recorded Suoni Modulanti (Abeat, recorded September 2001, released 2002), a set with the trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso on four tracks and the saxophonist Max Ionata on four, on which Ceccarelli also wrote "Our Secret," and Omaggio a Billie Holiday (Casa del Jazz, recorded March 31, 2008). Other sideman records from these years include the American singer Nancy King's Moon Ray (1999), on which he plays piano on one track, the guitarist Enrico Bracco's Going Wes (2002) and the saxophonist Toni Germani's Blues Ballate Canzoni (2005).

Standards records with visiting soloists are a thread of their own. Ceccarelli recorded two albums with the alto saxophonist Lee Konitz for the Philology label. At The New Mississippi Jazz Club is a quartet date, with Mauro Battisti on bass and Carlo Battisti on drums. Waxin' In Camerino (2011) was recorded on April 19 and 20, 2009, at the Teatro Marchetti in Camerino and the Moody Jazz Cafe in Foggia, by Konitz with Ceccarelli, the double bassist Chris Jennings and the drummer Patrick Goraguer, billed on Discogs as the Giovanni Ceccarelli French Trio; Ceccarelli produced it and wrote the liner notes, and Discogs credits the title track to Ceccarelli and Konitz jointly. The Nights Of The Buescher (2009) is a two-CD set of live recordings made in Macerata on March 12 and 13, 1992 by the alto saxophonist Massimo Urbani, with Ceccarelli on piano; he shares the piano chair on part of the second disc with Wied, and wrote liner notes. His first co-led release, The Street Dancer (Philology, 1998), is a piano duo with Wied, also devoted to standards. His official site quotes Enrico Rava, in a 2000 testimonial, naming him and Rosario Giuliani as the new Italian jazz talents, and the official biography lists Paolo Fresu, Benny Golson, Kenny Wheeler and Tony Scott among the musicians he has played or recorded with; none of these is itemized as a shared release credit on Discogs.

He later moved to France, and his official biography places him in Paris, Damascus and Beirut before he settled again in Paris. The first records under his own name date from that period. Feedin' Inner Urges (Quantum Jazz Music, 2009) is a duo with the vocalist Fabrizia Barresi that mixes originals with "My Funny Valentine," "Rabo de Nube" and a four-part suite; Daydreamin' (October 2010) is a six-track set of his own compositions that, according to a Fabriano Pro Musica interview, won the "Jazzit Likes It!" recognition from the magazine Jazzit. Météores (Bonsaï Music, May 12, 2011) is a trio record with the bassist Ferruccio Spinetti and the drummer Francesco Petreni; Discogs files it under Post Bop and Soul-Jazz, and his official site reports that it was selected by FIP radio in France and by Harmonia Mundi in Switzerland. Its twelve tracks include "The Ever-Changing Sky," "Canzone per Ferruccio" and a reading of Jobim's "Chega de Saudade."

With Spinetti he founded InventaRio in 2009, a quartet with Petreni and the Brazilian guitarist and singer Dadi Carvalho devoted to Brazilian repertoire and Italian songs. The debut InventaRio (My Favorite Records, 2010) has guests including Marisa Monte, Pacifico, Petra Magoni and Ivan Lins; his official site says it ranked among Japan's five best world-music albums of the year. InventaRio Incontra Ivan Lins (Blue Note and EMI in Italy in 2012, Biscoito Fino in Brazil in 2013) sets Lins's songs with Italian lyrics, with Lins himself on keyboards and voice; Discogs credits guests track by track, among them Maria Pia De Vito on "Stella d'A Mia," Fabrizio Bosso on "Madalena," Chico Buarque, Samuele Bersani, Chiara Civello and Maria Gadú. The album was a nominee for Best MPB Album at the 2014 Latin Grammy Awards, listed under the billing Ivan Lins and InventaRio. His Bandcamp biography credits him as artistic producer, arranger and keyboardist on it.

Since then his records have mostly been duos, with one quartet. With the bandoneon player Daniele Di Bonaventura, who began working with him in 2013, he made Mare Calmo (EvArt, 2015), a set of their own compositions, and Eu Te Amo - The Music of Tom Jobim (Bonsaï Music, released 2018 per Discogs and January 2019 per Spotify), a tribute to Antonio Carlos Jobim with Ivan Lins singing on two tracks, the singer Camille Bertault on one and the cellist Jaques Morelenbaum on four. With the tenor saxophonist Marcello Allulli he made Canto (ProMu, 2019) and performs live scores for silent films. With Spinetti, whom his site says he has known since 1989, he has recorded six albums, including two tribute records, More Morricone (Bonsaï Music, 2020), fifteen Ennio Morricone film themes on which he plays piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, toy piano, synthesizer and recorders alongside the vocalist Chrystel Wautier, and Le Grand Michel (Bonsaï Music, vinyl 2024 and digital release June 27, 2025), a bass and piano program of Michel Legrand music. The trio Arie (Jando Music and Via Veneto Jazz, 2022), with Spinetti and the drummer Jeff Ballard, adds Rita Marcotulli as a featured soloist on two tracks, which Discogs itemizes as tracks 1 and 13.

His own bands round out the list. Pagine Vere (Da Vinci Jazz, 2021) is a trio record with the singer Michela Lombardi and the guitarist Luca Falomi, recorded at Virus Studio in Monteriggioni on December 4 to 6, 2017, with Ceccarelli credited for arrangements, mixing and production and guests including Spinetti, Petra Magoni, Stéphane Casalta and Dadi. Voices (Parallel Records, October 25, 2024) is the first record of a quartet with the vibraphonist Andrea Dulbecco, the bassist Salvatore Maiore and the drummer Paolo Orlandi, made up of original pieces by the four members; the group first met for a studio video session in 2018. He has also arranged and directed records by others: the album by Animantiga, the project of Stéphane Casalta and the late Roberta Alloisio (Discogs lists it as Amori d'Oltremare), which his site says was nominated for the Targhe Tenco and the Premio Loano, and Occhi (2011) by the singer Francesco Giannelli. In 2022 he published In Music's Hands, a sheet music book of his compositions, and he plays solo concerts, on piano and the clavietta (a small keyboard melodica), in Italy, France, Switzerland and Japan; with the humanitarian association Life4Syria he co-organized a series of Concerts for Syria.

He has taught for more than thirty years. For fifteen years he presided over the association InJazz, which organized jazz clinics in Italy, and he now teaches jazz piano at the CRR conservatory in Cergy-Pontoise and the CRD Quincy Jones conservatory in Mantes-la-Jolie, near Paris, besides giving masterclasses abroad, among them one at the Daya Indonesia Performing Arts Academy in Jakarta in 2023. In February 2020 he was billed for a solo concert in his home town at the Oratorio della Carità, preceded by a masterclass on arranging in jazz. His official site lists about sixty recordings; the Discogs artist page itemizes 42 releases, 38 of them tagged Jazz.

Ceccarelli's records fall into three groups. The first is straight-ahead standards work, the Konitz, Urbani and Wied releases, where Discogs tags Waxin' In Camerino with the style Bop. The second is repertoire built on other composers and on Brazilian song: the Jobim, Morricone and Legrand tributes, an Ellington songbook with Ghiglioni, and the Brazilian thread that runs from InventaRio to Eu Te Amo. The third is his own writing, for the trio, the duos and the quartet Voices, with a sheet music collection, In Music's Hands, behind it. Film, poetry and theater work fill out the catalog, including I Canti di Leopardi (Micromega, 1998), a set of the poet Giacomo Leopardi's texts read by the actor Arnoldo Foà over a jazz ensemble.

The testimonials quoted on his official site describe a restrained, lyrical player. In 2009 Benny Golson likened his playing to that of Hank Jones for the care taken over each note, and Ivan Lins, in 2020, called him a "wonderful, elegant, calm, minimalist pianist." The Italian critic Flavio Caprera, in the Dizionario del Jazz Italiano, is quoted there on his sensibility as both a leader and an accompanist. He has long been a singer's pianist, with Ghiglioni, Montellanico, Lombardi and Barresi, and his site lists the vocalists Victoria Rummler, Valentina Casula and Caroline Faber as current duo partners. He also plays the clavietta, a small keyboard melodica, and the Fender Rhodes on several records.