Iacopo Teolis is a Rome-born trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer, born in 1999. He started music at six with drums and African percussion and moved to trumpet at nine, after hearing Louis Armstrong's recording of "La Vie en Rose," as he told the Italian weekly Left. He studied privately in Rome with Carlo Conti, Pietro Lussu, Francesco Fratini, Daniele Tittarelli and Francesco Lento, according to his published biography, then enrolled at the Siena Jazz academy, where he won a scholarship, graduated with top marks in 2021 and stayed for the two-year advanced program, working with Seamus Blake, Jeff Ballard, Greg Hutchinson and Ralph Alessi. Those teacher names come from his biography rather than from any recording credit. He also studied with Dave Douglas in 2020 and 2021, working on Bach chorales, Thelonious Monk pieces and contemporary repertoire, and later took up a master's course at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he has played in the academy's jazz orchestra.

His first recorded appearances are as a sideman in Rome. He plays trumpet and flugelhorn on singer-songwriter Lorenzo Pucci's Sono Sempre In Ritardo (Fool Immersion, 2021), on which Evita Polidoro is the drummer, and trumpet on two tracks of guitarist Edoardo Liberati's Everyday Life (GleAM Records, 2022), a session recorded and mixed by Francesco Ponticelli. In 2023 he recorded Introducing Wasted Generation (GleAM Records) with the Rome quintet Wasted Generation, in which he plays trumpet and flugelhorn beside alto saxophonist Gabriel Marciano, pianist Vittorio Solimene, double bassist Giulio Scianatico and drummer Cesare Mangiocavallo. The record was produced by the American bassist Joe Sanders, with whom Teolis won a residency at the San Leo Music Fest, and All About Jazz described the band as a young group focused on free contemporary jazz, melodic exploration and an avant-garde approach to improvisation. In the same years he was working in several Roman ensembles, including RusticaXBand, the Piccola Orchestra di Tor Pignattara and the Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra.

In 2022 he and alto saxophonist Lorenzo Simoni, a fellow Siena Jazz graduate, formed the duo Simoni:Teolis. Their debut, Openings (Emme Record Label, released May 30, 2024), is a ten-track record for trumpet and saxophone alone, with no rhythm section: Simoni's original compositions and some fully improvised pieces, drawing on Bach, Hindemith, Steve Reich and Stravinsky as well as video-game soundtracks and players such as Ambrose Akinmusire and Ben Wendel. Jazz Convention praised Teolis's "pastoso" timbre and his ability to stay mostly in the central register while balancing the dialogue with his partner. The duo has also played Rome's Casa del Jazz.

His debut as a leader is The Moving Forest (Parco della Musica Records, PMR187CD), released on February 7, 2025. Recorded on March 29 to 31, 2022 at Cicaleto Recording Studio in Arezzo, it pairs a jazz quartet with bassoon and cello: Teolis on trumpet and flugelhorn, Vittorio Solimene on piano and Rhodes, Marco Taraddei on bassoon, Livia De Romanis on cello and Luca Caruso on drums, with a double bass part that Discogs does not itemize and press coverage gives to Stefano Zambon. Teolis is credited with the compositions, arrangements, lyrics and production; Dave Douglas wrote the liner notes, and Ponticelli recorded, mixed and mastered the session. The nine tracks include an arrangement of Benny Golson's "I Remember Clifford" (see Benny Golson) and "La Principessa," on which his young sister Arianna Teolis sings. The title comes from the Birnam Wood prophecy in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Teolis presented it at Casa del Jazz on February 14, 2025, and at the 52nd Jazz Winter festival in Latina, and told interviewers the project grew out of hearing the Santa Cecilia orchestra in Rome in 2018 and out of the example of violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, who fuses hip-hop with classical music.

He received the "Giovane visionario" (Young Visionary) award from Il Jazz italiano per le terre del sisma in L'Aquila in 2023, and in 2026 was one of ten finalists at the 30th Premio Internazionale Massimo Urbani in Camerino, the competition named for saxophonist Massimo Urbani; the top prize that year went to pianist Leo Dalla Cort. Teolis has no exact birth date on record.

Teolis's stated project is a bridge between modern jazz and classical music. On The Moving Forest that means chamber timbres (bassoon and cello beside a jazz rhythm section) and through-composed writing, in what one reviewer called a synthesis of jazz and classical music that puts compositional craft ahead of display. His duo record with Simoni works the same idea with two voices: counterpoint-minded lines from Bach and Hindemith, minimalist repetition from Reich, Stravinsky's rhythmic edges and the melodic language of contemporary trumpeters such as Ambrose Akinmusire.

His teachers and reference points reflect that split. He studied with Dave Douglas, a trumpeter known for writing that moves freely between jazz and other traditions, and Douglas's liner notes appear on his debut. Jazz Convention describes his sound as full and soft-edged rather than brassy, centered in the middle of the horn. Wasted Generation shows the other side of his work, a Rome quintet playing free, melodic contemporary jazz built around collective writing rather than a single leader.