Giovanni Falzone was born on 22 May 1974 in Lippstadt, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and has called the birthplace a coincidence of his life, having spent only about five months there. He grew up in Aragona, in the province of Agrigento in Sicily. He took up the trumpet at 17 at the music school of Aragona's town band, then studied at the Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory in Palermo under Gioacchino Ciavarello, finishing with full marks in four years. A jazz diploma with top honors from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan followed.

From 1996 to 2004 he worked in the classical world, collaborating with Italian opera and symphonic companies and playing as a regular member of Milan's Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi under conductors including Giuseppe Sinopoli, Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Chailly and Luciano Berio, with soloists such as Martha Argerich and Placido Domingo. A concert listing from his birthplace puts his orchestra concerts at more than 1,000. Alongside the orchestra work he was already winning jazz recognition: Best Talent at the Umbria Jazz Clinics in 2000, and in 2004 both the Django d'Or for best new talent and Musica Jazz's Top Jazz award in the same category. From 2004 he devoted himself to jazz and composition full time.

The records began before he left the orchestra. Music For Five (Splasc(h), 2002) was a quintet session with tenor saxophonist Tino Tracanna, vibraphonist Francesco Pinetti, bassist Tito Mangialajo Rantzer and drummer Ferdinando Faraò. Then came a run of large-form pieces for Soul Note and its sister label Black Saint: Big Fracture (2003, Contemporary Ensemble, with drummer Cristiano Calcagnile, pianist Libero Mureddu and violist Paolo Botti), Earthquake Suite (2004, Chamber Group), the live Live In Clusone (recorded 25 July 2004 and shared with alto saxophonist Gaetano Partipilo and pianist Mirko Signorile), Suite For Bird (2005, Septet), Meeting In Paris (2006, European Ensemble, recorded at the Bopcity studio in Paris with pianist Bruno Angelini) and R-Evolution Suite (2007). Suite For Bird is a tribute to Charlie Parker, and Falzone painted its cover himself. With Angelini he also formed the piano-and-trumpet If Duo, which made three albums between 2008 and 2012.

From 2008 to 2020 he was the trumpeter in Francesco Bearzatti's Tinissima Quartet, alongside bassist Danilo Gallo and drummer Zeno De Rossi. Discogs credits him on all five of the group's albums: Suite For Tina Modotti (2008), X (Suite For Malcolm) (2010), Monk'N'Roll (2013), This Machine Kills Fascists (2015) and Zorro (2020), as well as on the live set Tinissima Special Edition (Casa del Jazz, 2016).

His own bands are built around tributes treated as original music. Around Jimi (CAM Jazz, 2010) is the electric quartet Mosche Elettriche, recorded on 12 and 13 October 2009 in Milan with guitarist Valerio Scrignoli, bassist Michele Tacchi and drummer Riccardo Tosi, playing Jimi Hendrix. Around Ornette (Parco della Musica Records, 2011) is a pianoless quintet with Bearzatti, trombonist Beppe Caruso, bassist Paolino Dalla Porta and Zeno De Rossi, built on the music of Ornette Coleman; it won Musica Jazz's Top Jazz award for best album of 2011, the year he also took the poll's brass-player category. Led Zeppelin Suite (Musicamorfosi, 2016), recorded in June 2012 with Falzone conducting and arranging a chamber-sized ensemble that includes bassoon and flute, completes the set of Coleman, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin projects he has developed with the Musicamorfosi association, with which he has worked since 2004.

In 2017 he released Pianeti Affini on CAM Jazz, a quintet with accordionist Fausto Beccalossi, trombonist Filippo Vignato, bassist Giulio Corini and drummer Alessandro Rossi, recorded at Artesuono in Cavalicco on 2 and 3 February 2017. Vignato also plays on Abbey's Road (Incipit, 2017), a record with singer Ada Montellanico that Falzone arranged, recorded in Cavalicco in 2016. The Open Quartet followed with L'Albero Delle Fate (Parco della Musica Records, 2019), with pianist Enrico Zanisi, bassist Jacopo Ferrazza and Rossi; Falzone took the lake and tree photographs in its booklet. Italian Wikipedia records a 2019 commission from the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano for his Blackstar Suite, written for trio and symphony orchestra.

Dialogo Espressivo (Parco della Musica Records, 2021) is a duo with pianist Glauco Venier. Its opening piece, "Il poeta del silenzio", was written on 20 August 2019 for Enrico Rava's 80th birthday, and the eleven originals include tributes to trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Tomasz Stanko as well as Rava; in a Jazzit interview he said the duo recorded the album in about half a day, without overdubs. Canto Terrestre (Parco della Musica Records, 30 June 2023) is the fourth Freak Machine album, a trio of trumpet, electric bass and drums in which Falzone also sings and runs electronics, built on Mediterranean folk sources and the Belice valley of Sicily; Giuseppe La Grutta plays bass and Andrea Bruzzone drums. In December 2024 he appeared with Furio Di Castri, Achille Succi, Fabio Giachino and drummer Mattia Barbieri on Di Castri's Sunday Afternoon, recorded at Casa del Jazz in Rome in February 2024. In 2025 he and Dalla Porta released Minimal Duo (Abeat), a bass-and-trumpet duo whose sessions were recorded in Milan in 2012.

His newest project is the Libera Band, a quintet of players under 30 - alto saxophonist Raffaele Fiengo, pianist Massimiliano Cameroni, bassist La Grutta and drummer Riccardo Marchese - that debuted on 23 January 2026 at the Teatro di Corte in Monza. Its album Suite For Miles (Tǔk Music, 2026) was written for the Miles Davis centenary at Time in Jazz 2026, a commission Musica Jazz credits to Paolo Fresu; it weaves fragments of Miles Davis's music together with Falzone's own compositions in a continuous suite form.

He teaches trumpet and ensemble music at the Luca Marenzio Conservatory in Brescia and at Siena Jazz University, and has previously taught at the Verdi Conservatories in Milan and Como and in New York University's programs in Europe. Other honors listed by Italian Wikipedia include the Trofeo Insound in the winds category (2008), second place for best European musician in the Academie du Jazz poll (2009), the Premio Nazionale Alessio Di Giovanni for music (2017), an entry in Lippstadt's Golden Book (2019) and the Premio Citta di Aragona (2023). The same page lists him on stage with Giorgio Gaslini, Enrico Pieranunzi, Rita Marcotulli, Roberto Gatto, Flavio Boltro and Claudio Fasoli, among others.

Falzone's trumpet moves between an open, melodic lyricism and electronics-processed noise, and the same players and ideas recur across very different records. His classical years explain the scale of his writing: suites, chamber ensembles and a conducted orchestra are as central to his catalogue as quartets. The jazz references are explicit in the titles: Charlie Parker on Suite For Bird, Ornette Coleman on Around Ornette, Miles Davis on Suite For Miles, and a guest trumpet spot on Riccardo Fioravanti's Coltrane Project. Beside them sit two rock projects, Hendrix on Around Jimi and Led Zeppelin on Led Zeppelin Suite, handled as source material for improvisation rather than as covers.

Since the 2010s a second thread has developed around Sicily and electronics: the brass-and-reeds ensemble of Far East Trip, on which Falzone plays an instrument Discogs credits as the "Falzofono", the folk-inflected Canto Terrestre (whose program includes "Belice/Freak Folk" and a closing piece titled "Maccalube"), and live electronics on Pianeti Affini. One reviewer of Canto Terrestre describes his catalogue as balancing impressionism and expressionism, with open, luminous frameworks.