Giovanni Sanna Passino is a trumpeter, flugelhorn player and composer from Sassari, in northwest Sardinia. By his own biography he has played in the Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna (OJS) since 2004, and he appears on the orchestra's published 2025 base roster as "tromba / flicorno." His birth date and training are not publicly documented. What is on record is a 30-year trail of Sardinian jazz recordings, a self-produced leader album from 2023, and a place at the front of the orchestra's small-group and soloist projects.

His earliest Discogs credit is Burrum' Ballad (1996, Splasc(h) Records), a six-track CD by the Scrusciuscatalasciu Quintet, on which he plays trumpet and flugelhorn beside tenor saxophonist Massimo Carboni, guitarist Giorgio Murtas, bassist Sandro Fontoni and drummer Giuseppe Albanese. It reached streaming services as a digital reissue in 2015. Its opening track is titled "Out Of Fashion"; his 2026 waltz for quintet is called "Out of Fashion Reloaded."

The best documented of his bands outside the orchestra is Mudras, in which, by his account, he played for three years and made two CDs for the Blue Serge label, touring mainly in Italy and Spain. Skywalkin' (2011, Blue Serge BLS-038) has him on trumpet and electronics with bassist Salvatore Maltana, drummer Massimo Russino, pianist Mariano Tedde on Fender Rhodes, guitarist Bachisio Ulgheri and, on two tracks, soprano saxophonist Gavino Murgia. The follow-up, Loading (Blue Serge, 2014), was recorded by the quartet of Passino, Tedde, Maltana and Russino, and includes "May," which he wrote with singer Denise Gueye. A Sassari review of a December 2013 Mudras concert at the Teatro Civico, with Murgia guesting on saxophones, noted that his trumpet playing was much appreciated; the program ran from Miles Davis and John Coltrane to Ornette Coleman. Mudras was still working in 2026, when the Torino Jazz Festival programmed the quartet to present Loading, describing its sound as suspended between 1970s jazz-rock, metropolitan atmospheres and a return to soul and funk.

His Orchestra Jazz della Sardegna work is documented through the orchestra's own discography. He is named as one of five soloists, alongside trumpeter Antonio Meloni, on Bruno Tommaso's Concerto Grosso (L'eccezione e la regola) (2020, JazzOp), a suite of dances for five soloists and jazz orchestra, and he is in the ensemble on Bruno Tommaso e i solisti della OJDS (2016, JazzOp), recorded live for RAI Radio Tre in Rome with Gavino Mele on horn, Antonio Pitzoi on guitar and Alessandro Zolo on bass. In 2026 he is the trumpeter of the Blue Note Jazz Ensemble, the orchestra's seven-piece Blue Note Jazz Ensemble, on Skylark (JazzOp JOR009), with arrangements by Tedde and an original waltz of his own, "Out of Fashion Reloaded." The record was recorded at S'ard studio in Cagliari and premiered at the Teatro Civico in Sassari on February 22, 2026. According to his biography, the orchestra has put him on stage with Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Perico Sambeat, Fabrizio Bosso, Bob Mintzer and Norma Winstone, and he recorded with it on the record with Barbara Casini and Paolo Silvestri.

Linee d'ombra (2023) is his own record. He produced it himself and recorded it in November 2022 at guitarist Gianni Virdis's studio, with guitarist Simone Faedda on five tracks, Maltana on three, guitarist Marcello Peghin on two live improvisations, Virdis on guitar on "Eterni Antagonismi" and actor Daniele Monachella reciting on the same track. The 11 tracks run 46 minutes and mix his own pieces with standards, including "I'm Old Fashioned" and "Never Let Me Go." The title comes from Joseph Conrad's novel, and Sanna Passino describes the record as a set of reflections on the emotions of a life, built on ballads, blues and the electric atmospheres of the 1970s.

Outside the orchestra and Mudras he works in duos and trios. At the Dromos Festival in Oristano on August 1, 2022, he played a duo concert with guitarist Giorgio Crobu, who teaches jazz guitar at the Hanns Eisler Conservatory in Berlin, drawing on the famous duets of Jim Hall and Ron Carter, Chet Baker and Paul Desmond, and Bill Evans and Stan Getz. He is also in guitarist Marcello Peghin's trio with reed player Paolo Carta Mantiglia for the original-soundtrack project Chi salverà le rose, and in a bossa nova and afro-samba trio with Peghin and Gueye that played the Museo Sanna in Sassari. Other Discogs credits are Salvatore Spano Collective's Cinque Passi (In Memoria Di Un Poeta) (2022, Barnum For Art), a sextet suite inspired by Sergio Atzeni's novel with Italian liner notes by Bruno Tommaso, and pianist Raimondo Dore's Trama, where he plays trumpet on "Canadian Club."

He is not only a jazz player. He plays trumpet on Max Tosi's Let Me Ride (2008), a pop and folk album, and his biography lists sessions on reggae and roots records by Forelock and Macka B, on Train to Roots and Man Amplified, and on Barrio Sud's Cuentos (2016). The jazz record, however, is by far the larger and better documented part of his catalogue: four of his five Discogs credits carry the Jazz genre tag, and the fifth is the Tosi session.

Sanna Passino is a lyrical, blues-inflected trumpeter who moves between acoustic and electric settings. In Mudras he adds live electronics to the trumpet, in a rhythm section built on Fender Rhodes and double bass that the Torino Jazz Festival places between jazz-rock, funk and soul; a 2013 review of the group's concert names Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman as its touchstones. In the Blue Note Jazz Ensemble he plays standard repertoire in arrangements that treat it as living material rather than museum pieces. In duo with Crobu he goes back to the trumpet-and-guitar and trumpet-and-saxophone duets of Baker, Desmond, Evans and Getz. As a composer he writes waltzes, blues and short ballads, several of which return in new arrangements across his records.