Marco Tamburini was a trumpeter, flugelhorn player, arranger and composer born May 30, 1959, in Cesena, in Italy's Emilia-Romagna region. He began studying trumpet at Cesena's Istituto Musicale Arcangelo Corelli under Elio Comandini, then earned his diploma in 1979 at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna. He died on May 29, 2015, one day before his 56th birthday, in a motorcycle accident on Via Zanardi in Bologna.

Tamburini's concert career began in the 1980s and ran on both the Italian and international jazz circuits for three decades. He shared stages and recordings with a long list of Italian jazz musicians, including pianist Guido Manusardi, saxophonist Gianni Basso, trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti, drummer Giulio Capiozzo, saxophonists Pietro Tonolo and Gianluigi Trovesi, bassist Giovanni Tommaso, trumpeter Paolo Fresu, trumpeter Enrico Rava, pianist Dado Moroni, composer-conductor Giorgio Gaslini, pianist Danilo Rea and pianist Stefano Bollani, and maintained a standing collaboration with French guitarist Christian Escoudé. His American collaborators, live and in the studio, included trumpeter Eddie Henderson, saxophonists Sal Nistico, Steve Coleman and Joe Lovano, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, percussionist Ray Mantilla, drummer Louis Hayes, pianist Ben Sidran, trombonists Curtis Fuller and Slide Hampton, saxophonists Paul Jeffrey and Gary Bartz, pianist George Cables, bassist Ray Drummond, drummer Billy Hart, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Jimmy Cobb.

As a leader, Tamburini recorded Trip of Emotion (1996, Ermitage/Nel Jazz), billed with trombonist Slide Hampton; Feather Touch (2001, Splasc(h) Records); The Trumpet in the XX Century (2001, Fabula Classica), a program of 20th-century classical repertoire for trumpet and piano recorded with Stefano Bollani; Amigavel (2004, Caligola), a duo record with pianist Marcello Tonolo, who became one of his closest and most frequent recorded collaborators; Two Days in New York (2004, Caligola), cut in New York with George Cables, Ray Drummond, Billy Hart and Gary Bartz; Taking a Chance on Love (2004, Sound Hills Records), credited to the Jimmy Cobb Trio featuring Tamburini; Frenico (2006, Caligola) and Isole (2007, EmArcy), both built around a working group with Tonolo, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Billy Hart. Two further albums appeared after his death: East of the Moon (2023, Caligola), a duo with keyboardist Stefano Onorati drawn from a 2010 session, and Voce di Vento (2024, Casa Editions), a large-ensemble recording with A Cumpagnia and the Orchestra BargaJazz.

Tamburini performed at major international festivals including Umbria Jazz, Siena Jazz, the Roma Jazz Festival, the Dubai Jazz Festival, the Basel Jazz Wochen, the North Carolina International Jazz Festival and the Wiesen Jazz Festival, and played prestigious rooms including the Blue Note in Milan, Birdland in New York, the Sunset Club in Paris and the Megaron Theatre in Athens. In 1999 he originated and directed "Reunion," a Bologna-based project bringing together leading jazz musicians from Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. He was also a longtime presence at the BargaJazz Festival in Tuscany, recording with its Orchestra BargaJazz; the festival has run an annual "Marco Tamburini" jazz composition and arrangement competition since 2016 and dedicated its 2025 edition, ten years after his death, to his memory, with guest trumpeter Eddie Henderson. Tamburini taught jazz trumpet at the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Francesco Venezze" in Rovigo; on May 10, 2019, the conservatory's auditorium was renamed in his honor.

Alongside his jazz career, Tamburini worked extensively as a session trumpeter and horn arranger for Italian pop artists, including Raf, Vinicio Capossela, Enzo Jannacci, Marco Masini, Irene Grandi, Biagio Antonacci, Andrea Mingardi, Ladri di Biciclette, Stadio, Laura Pausini, Tiziano Ferro, Renato Zero, Marco Mengoni, Luca Carboni and, most extensively, Lorenzo "Jovanotti" Cherubini, with whom he worked on numerous recordings and tours between 1997 and 2015. His horn section backed George Michael and Grace Jones at the 2000 and 2004 editions of the Pavarotti International charity concerts, and in 2010 he and Jovanotti co-composed the score for the silent film restoration Sangue e Arena, released by Ermitage for the L'Espresso Group.

Tamburini was a versatile trumpet and flugelhorn player equally at home in small-group mainstream and post-bop settings, large-ensemble jazz composition and arranging, and 20th-century classical repertoire. His own leader dates ranged from the bebop-rooted quintet writing of Feather Touch and Frenico to the classical-crossover program of The Trumpet in the XX Century, recorded with Stefano Bollani on works including a Hindemith sonata for trumpet and piano. His parallel career as a horn arranger for pop artists, most durably Jovanotti, ran alongside his jazz work for nearly two decades rather than displacing it, and his own compositions, including "Eduard," recorded by the Eddie Henderson Quartet on Flight of Mind (1991), and "Frenico," found their way into other musicians' recorded repertoire.