Marcello Abate is an Italian jazz guitarist and composer born in 1990. He trained at the "Lucio Campiani" Conservatory in Mantua, completing an intermediate classical guitar diploma before finishing a three-year jazz guitar program with top marks under teachers including Simone Guiducci, Mauro Negri, Oscar del Barba, Roberto Dani and Chiara De Vivo. He went on to earn a second-level academic diploma at the "A. Pedrollo" Conservatory in Vicenza, studying with guitarist Michele Calgaro, pianist Paolo Birro and saxophonist Pietro Tonolo, and rounded out his education with masterclasses under Joe Lovano, Mike Stern, Dave Liebman, Greg Howe, Peter Bernstein and Kenny Barron, plus a scholarship earned at the Nuoro Jazz clinics in 2016. One artist database (Viberate) lists his hometown as Porto Mantovano, near Mantua, consistent with his conservatory training there, though this specific detail is not independently corroborated elsewhere.

Abate formed the guitar trio Offset 5 in 2010 with drummer Federico Negri and a bassist, originally devoted to jazz standards; the group added alto saxophonist Manuel Caliumi in 2016, shifting toward original material, and became a quintet in 2018 with the addition of vibraphonist Giovanni Perin. Offset 5's album Deflections (2021, TRJ Records) was reviewed by All About Jazz. Earlier, in 2014, Abate recorded Buds with clarinetist Mauro Negri's quartet, alongside bassist Gabriele Rampi Ungar, drummer Federico Negri, and pianist Antonio Faraò as a guest; the band toured Finland and Norway in February 2015. Faraò, credited on Discogs alongside Abate on that session, is profiled separately as Antonio Faraò.

In 2022 Abate played guitar on No More Wrong Mistakes (This Our Music) by the Lydian Sound Orchestra, an Italian jazz big band conducted by Riccardo Brazzale and featuring American saxophonist David Murray as arranger and soloist; Murray is profiled separately as David Murray. Abate also records with Selfie Jungle, a group devoted to the music of Duke Ellington (Stick To Duke, 2022, Velut Luna), and with the fusion-leaning quartet documented on the self-titled Velut Luna release (2021), alongside pianist Lorenzo De Luca, bassist Martino De Franceschi and drummer Marco Soldà, tagged Free Jazz on Discogs.

His most personal project to date is Il Testamento dell'Albero (2023, Caligola Records), a tribute album made with vocalist Valentina Fin, bassist Matteo Padoin and drummer Daniele Patton, three years after the early death of pianist Marco Birro (1993-2020), a friend and fellow student at the Vicenza conservatory. The record sets Fin's Italian-language lyrics against a mix of trio, quartet and quintet instrumental settings, drawing on previously unreleased Birro compositions, and features guest appearances from two of the group's own Vicenza teachers, saxophonists Robert Bonisolo and Pietro Tonolo, plus a piano appearance from Paolo Birro, Marco Birro's father, on one track.

Abate has won the "Concorso Nazionale Chicco Bettinardi" (2019) and the "Premio Zorzella" (2018), two competitions within the Italian jazz circuit, and has served as artistic director of a jazz concert series in Mantua. He continues to perform as a solo guitarist: in 2026 he appeared under the "Proxima: The Young Side" banner of the Vicenza Jazz festival with a "Guitar Solo" recital of unaccompanied classical-guitar jazz playing.

Abate's output spans several registers of the Italian jazz scene rather than one fixed style: the standards-turned-originals book of Offset 5, credited on Discogs as Contemporary Jazz; the freer, more open-ended writing of the Velut Luna quartet, tagged Free Jazz; the big-band writing of the Lydian Sound Orchestra; a repertoire tribute to Duke Ellington with Selfie Jungle; and the intimate, song-based Il Testamento dell'Albero, built around Valentina Fin's vocals and Marco Birro's unrecorded compositions. His own description of his musical range, cited in festival programming copy, spans jazz, pop, free improvisation, electronics and classical guitar repertoire, and his unaccompanied classical-guitar recitals (billed as "Guitar Solo") sit alongside his work in electric-guitar-led combos.