Luca Gusella was born in Milan in 1962 and earned his diploma in percussion instruments at the city's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in 1986, studying under Franco Campioni - the same teacher, in the same percussion class, who also trained his future duo partner Andrea Dulbecco. He built a parallel career as a classical percussionist alongside his jazz work: he won a timpani competition at Alessandria's Laboratorio Lirico in 1981, placed second in a timpani competition for the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in 1984, played in the ensemble Percussionisti di Milano from 1980 to 1992, held the timpani chair of the Orchestra Stabile di Bergamo from 1993 to 1997, and has performed with the RAI Milan Symphony Orchestra, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Teatro alla Scala soloists. He has also worked as a touring percussionist behind visiting American and Italian popular acts, including Ray Charles, Barry White and Franco Battiato.

Since 1997, Gusella has co-led the Aisha Duo with vibraphonist Andrea Dulbecco, playing marimba opposite Dulbecco's vibraphone. Their sole studio album, Quiet Songs (2005, ObliqSound), sets eight of Chick Corea's "Children's Songs" for mallets, with guest appearances from frame-drum player Glen Velez and cellist Marco Decimo; two of its tracks, "Amanda" and "Despertar," were bundled as default sample audio files with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. Gusella also plays marimba on Dulbecco's own trio album Sunday Afternoon (2008, Abeat Records).

Gusella's other long-running affiliation is with Nexus, the free-jazz sextet co-led since December 1980 by drummer Tiziano Tononi and saxophonist Daniele Cavallanti. Discogs-verified credits place him in the band's vibraphone chair on two of its recent records, The Call: For A New Life (2021, Red Records) and Nexus Plays Dolphy (2024, Red Records), a program of Eric Dolphy compositions recorded with fellow reed player Achille Succi on alto saxophone and bass clarinet and bassist Andrea Grossi. He has also been the vibraphonist of Artchipel Orchestra, the Milan-area jazz big band directed by Ferdinando Faraò, across at least four Discogs-documented releases between 2020 and 2025: Truly Yours: Musiche di Phil Miller (2020, Musica Jazz), Jonathan Coe & Artchipel Orchestra (2022), Tubular Bells Variations (2024, a big-band reworking of Mike Oldfield's music) and Officine Mengelberg (2025). Since 2003 he has also played vibraphone in the Barga Jazz Festival's own house big band, Orchestra BargaJazz, directed by double bassist Bruno Tommaso; Discogs credits him on vibraphone throughout BargaLee BargaJazz_03 (2004, Philology), a session built around guest soloist Lee Konitz.

Gusella's other sideman credits include vibraphone on Giorgio Gaslini's own ensemble session Masks (1992, Musica Jazz/Soul Note); vibraphone on the New Art Ensemble's Live In Paris (1994); vibraphone on composer Ennio Morricone's Vidi Aquam Id Est Benacum (1994); marimba on Carlo Boccadoro and Sentieri Selvaggi's contemporary-classical recording Musica Coelestis (1999, Einaudi) - a classical, not jazz, credit; and vibraphone across six albums recorded between 2013 and 2023 by composer and bandleader Dino Betti van der Noot's working orchestra, from The Stuff Dreams Are Made On (2013) through Let Us Recount Our Dreams (2023). He has taught percussion, improvisation and ensemble music since 1986 at Milan's Civica Scuola di Musica (now part of the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado/Fondazione Milano), and in 1990 co-founded the marimba duo Doblel with percussionist Beppe Sciuto.

In 2025, Gusella released his first record under his own name alone, Portraits (Caligola Records), a vibraphone trio with double bassist Andrea Grossi and drummer Alessandro Rossi playing a program of jazz standards and originals - Wayne Shorter's "Infant Eyes," John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," Charles Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," Bill Evans's "Time Remembered" and Lee Konitz's "Kary's Trance" among them - with individual tracks dedicated to Dulbecco, drummer Billy Cobham, Sciuto and Chick Corea.

Gusella's catalog runs across four distinct settings on the same family of mallet instruments: the intimate, rhythm-section-free chamber-jazz format of the Aisha Duo; the free-jazz small-group interplay of Nexus, tagged by Discogs "Free Jazz" and "Post Bop"; large-ensemble big-band writing with Artchipel Orchestra and Orchestra BargaJazz, tagged "Big Band" and "Avant-garde Jazz"; and, on his 2025 leader debut Portraits, a conventional post-bop vibraphone-trio format built around standard repertoire, tagged by Discogs "Contemporary Jazz" and "Post Bop." That range sits alongside a separate, substantial career as a classical orchestral percussionist and timpanist, kept distinct in his own biography from his jazz work.