Giovanni Perin is a vibraphonist, composer and teacher from Padua, where he was born in 1987, the son of the vibraphonist Giuliano Perin. He began on piano at eight, entered a conservatory percussion class at fourteen, and studied with Massimo Pastore and Alberto Macchini. In the summer of 2006 he attended Berklee's five-week summer program in Boston, studying vibraphone and marimba with Ed Saindon. Masterclasses with the vibraphonists David Friedman and Dave Samuels, the pianist Barry Harris and the marimbist Ney Rosauro fill out his own account of his training.

In 2010 he graduated from the Adria conservatory with a percussion diploma and from the University of Padua with a degree in music and performing arts, both with top marks. From 2010 to 2015 he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, where his official biography lists Friedman, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, drummer John Hollenbeck and bassist Greg Cohen as teachers, and he added a jazz master's degree from the Rovigo conservatory in 2014. Friedman is quoted in the Bandcamp notes to Perin's album #pera praising his "infectious swing feel."

His competition record starts early: first prize at the national Jazz Lighthouse award in Genoa in 2007 and third place in the soloist section of Roma Jam Session the same year, the Premio Zorzella in 2011, joint second place at the Premio Massimo Urbani in 2011, first prize for the best young band CD at the Premio Chicco Bettinardi in 2015 (for Oirquartett) and first prize at the Premio Marco Tamburini in 2016. Jazzit magazine has ranked him among the ten best Italian vibraphonists, and in 2017 he was a guest at the Vibraphone Summit of the Los Angeles Jazz Society.

His first album as a leader, Dream With Open Eyes (2011), was made with a Berlin rhythm section of pianist Elias Stemeseder, bassist Igor Spallati and drummer Tilo Weber, with Fabrizio Bosso as special guest on trumpet. In Berlin he also played in Chat Noir, an acoustic quartet with soprano saxophone, guitar and bass that performs 1920s and 1930s swing songs in a Django Reinhardt vein (Chat Noir Live at Picnic Records, 2013). Double Vibes (2015) is a duo record with bassist Riccardo Di Vinci: seven standards and originals including "Night And Day," "East Of The Sun" and "Time Remembered." The Italian song project Itali"Amo" (2016) followed with pianist Artur Tuznik and bassist Giuseppe Bottiglieri, reworking five Italian songs of the 1940s to 1960s.

His sextet album #pera (2016, recorded in Berlin in May 2015) put him in front of pianist Tino Derado, tenor saxophonist Tommaso Troncon, trumpeter Dima Bondarev, bassist Marcel Krömker and drummer Diego Pinera in a program that mixes originals with standards, opens with "Brecker's Tune" and includes a re-harmonized "Darn That Dream." Troncon and trumpeter Mirko Cisilino are the horns on the Oir Quartett album Oirquartett (Abeat, 2015), which won the Bettinardi prize. In 2018 an AIR grant took him to Montreal for a month at the Italian Cultural Institute, where he worked with saxophonist Christine Jensen, bassist Fraser Hollins and drummer Jim Doxas on the material for a nine-piece project, and a concert with Jensen followed on 7 September 2018 at the Saint-Raphaël church in Île-Bizard.

Two of his own bands now run side by side. His quintet made Portraits (2021) with Troncon, pianist Giulio Scaramella, bassist Riccardo Di Vinci and drummer Marco Soldà, and the quartet album Meet Me (Irma Records, 2025) has Scaramella, bassist Alessio Zoratto and drummer Luca Colussi, with tenor saxophonist Michele Polga on three tracks. The other band is D.O.V.E., the Drums Organ Vibes Ensemble: Perin, Hammond organist Giulio Campagnolo and drummer Andrea Davì. The trio has released Where Are You? (Statale 11, 2017), Here We Are! (Cat Sound Records, 2019, recorded on 23 and 24 March 2019 at Cat Sound Studio in Badia Polesine) and Vol. 3 - Ten Years Later (Irma Records, 2025), which also appeared with a limited 7-inch single of "Crocodile Boogaloo" and "206 Problems."

He is a sideman on Offset 5's Deflections (TRJ Records, 2021, with alto saxophonist Manuel Caliumi) and, according to his own discography, on records by Carlo Cantini (Heptagon, 2022), Roberto Occhipinti (Remnants, 2024), Valentina Mattarozzi (Duetz, 2026) and Loris Stefanuto (2026). On 11 April 2024 he played at a tribute to Enzo Randisi at Palermo's Teatro Santa Cecilia, on Randisi's own Musser vibraphone, which Perin had restored. In early 2026 he shared the stage at the Duke Jazz Club in Bari with the young vibraphonist Vitantonio Gasparro for a "Vibraphone Legacy" program honoring Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson and Gary Burton.

Teaching is a second full-time strand. He taught online for the VibesWorkshop community from 2012 to 2021, taught percussion in Padua and Castelfranco schools from 2014 to 2021, has given masterclasses in Toronto, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Aalborg, Krakow and other cities, and since 2022 has been professor of improvisation and composition techniques at the Trapani conservatory. His publications include Aforismi, eleven etudes for solo vibraphone (Musikkforlagene, Oslo, 2017), the Easy Mallets method books (2020 to 2025) and the method book Jazz Vibraphone: Journey to Artistry (Mostly Marimba, 2022).

Perin plays four-mallet vibraphone in a swinging, melodic post-bop idiom, and the label copy for #pera describes him as treating the instrument as a melodic voice rather than a percussive one. His repertoire sits between two poles: original tunes in a jazz, Latin and funk mix (the eight compositions of Meet Me), and rearranged standards and Italian songs (Itali"Amo", Double Vibes). His tributes name his lineage: "Brecker's Tune" for Michael Brecker on #pera, and a Hampton, Jackson and Burton program in Bari.

D.O.V.E. is a different register. It is a bass-less trio, and its Bandcamp description places its material anywhere from energetic soul-jazz to refined hard bop, reinterpreting 1960s and 1970s sounds with contemporary arrangements; "Crocodile Boogaloo" is the soul-jazz side of that. His classical percussion background, including orchestral work with the Orchestra Mozart and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, gives him the technical range for the solo etudes and duo settings.