Matteo Fraboni is a drummer and composer born October 15, 1983, in Senigallia, on Italy's Adriatic coast in the Marche region. By his own account he found music early, drawn to radio broadcasts and toy instruments around age seven or eight, then discovered the drums at 13 after hearing records at a friend's house; by 15 he had decided to make music his profession. He started as a largely self-taught player, studying privately with a series of teachers across rock, pop, funk, jazz, Latin and world music before moving into formal training. His own account and festival biographies name three established Italian jazz musicians he studied and practiced with in this period: pianist Ramberto Ciammarughi, and drummers Fabrizio Sferra and Massimo Manzi; none of the three has a shared recording credit with Fraboni, so these are stated here as reported teacher-student relationships rather than Discogs-confirmed collaborations. He also traveled to Cuba to study percussion, and an independent Italian review of his debut album credits him with having worked with Cuban percussionist Changuito (Jose Luis Quintana); no recording documents this pairing, so it is reported as stated rather than independently verified. He attended Berklee College of Music's summer program in Perugia, part of the long-running Umbria Jazz educational clinics through which Berklee faculty teach in Italy each year, and holds a degree in Jazz Composition and Arrangement from the Conservatorio "Giovanni Battista Martini" in Bologna.

Fraboni moved to Rome as a young professional. In 2011 he recorded as a sideman on pianist Emilio Marinelli's trio album Clouds Digger (Dodicilune), alongside bassist Amin Zarrinchang, a Discogs-confirmed credit. The following January, at 27, he traveled to Brooklyn, New York, to record his own debut as a leader, This Is My Music, with an American quintet: saxophonists George Garzone and Logan Richardson, pianist Aruan Ortiz and bassist Rashaan Carter. Released in 2012 on the Italian label Via Veneto Jazz (VVJ 075) with distribution reaching France, the UK and Japan through EMI, the album was reviewed by Alex Franquelli for All About Jazz, who placed Fraboni within a wave of young contemporary European jazz musicians and described a record that draws on fusion, rock and classical elements alongside Asian, African, Ethiopian-jazz and Cuban-percussion influences.

Fraboni's career then took him well beyond Italy. He has taught percussion and led ensembles at academies and cultural events in Europe, the United States and India; a 2016 interview describes him as a faculty member in percussion at the KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, the school founded by composer A.R. Rahman, and the same interview mentions a performance accompanying a special screening of the 1916 Italian silent film Cenere at Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata. The Chennai conservatory's current public faculty listing no longer names him, so this teaching post is reported as a past rather than an ongoing role. His quintet also performed at India's Serendipity Arts Festival.

A decade after his debut, Fraboni returned to recording with a new Marche-based quintet: saxophonist Mike Rossi, trumpeter Giacomo Uncini, pianist Nico Tangherlini and bassist Gianludovico Carmenati. Recorded in the Marche on October 2 and 3, 2021, and released February 9, 2022, on the Japanese label Chap Chap Records, After the Sail is a five-track set of Fraboni originals; this release does not yet appear in Discogs, so its personnel and recording details are drawn from the label's own Bandcamp page rather than a Discogs credit. Two days after that session, on October 4 and 5, 2021, in Ancona, Fraboni recorded a trio date with Tangherlini and Carmenati devoted to jazz standards - "Green Chimneys," "All the Things You Are," "Bemsha Swing," "Donna Lee" and others - released February 22, 2023, again on Chap Chap Records, as Matteo Fraboni Trio: Standards. Like After the Sail, this release is documented here from Bandcamp rather than Discogs.

Fraboni names Elvin Jones, Tony Williams and Art Blakey as his primary drumming influences, and describes a drummer's role as an "energy catalyst" who shapes a band's volume and sound rather than a technician chasing speed. His debut, This Is My Music, is the clearest expression of an eclectic, internationally minded approach: an American rhythm section and frontline recorded in Brooklyn, built from original compositions that reviewers heard as reaching past straight-ahead jazz into fusion, rock, classical writing and non-Western material, from Asian scales to Cuban percussion. His later work, recorded a decade on with an Italian quintet and trio based in his home region, moves between two poles: After the Sail's original compositions in a fairly mainstream post-bop quintet format, and Matteo Fraboni Trio: Standards, a set built entirely from the jazz songbook, arranged mostly by Fraboni himself.