Maurizio Camardi was born in Padua, in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, on June 17, 1960. He plays across the reed family, from sopranino to baritone saxophone, and carries a set of folk wind instruments into his jazz work, chiefly the Armenian duduk and the ciaramella, a double-reed shawm from central and southern Italy. His profile on Discogs, where his catalog is filed under a single unambiguous artist entity (ID 2235347), describes him simply as an "Italian saxophonist and flutist."

In 1985 he co-founded the George Gershwin Music School in Padua with musicologist Roberto Favaro, and he has served as its artistic director ever since. He has directed the school's Gershwin Jazz Orchestra since 1992 and a second regional big band, the Orchestra Jazz del Veneto, since 2012. His early touring act, Fusion Market, worked Central American dates in the 1980s.

Camardi's own leader discography begins with In alto mare (1997, Caligola), a nine-track set that already carries the tango and Latin American inflections ("Milonga para c...", "El Che'") that would recur across his catalog. Impronte (2006, Caligola) put him in a quartet with harpist Vincenzo Zitello, pianist Alfonso Santimone, bassist Danilo Gallo and drummer Enzo Zirilli. A parallel duo project with the Sardinian lute and mandola player Mauro Palmas produced Cristiani di Allah (2008), issued as an insert bound into crime novelist Massimo Carlotto's novel of the same name (Edizioni E/O) rather than sold as a standalone release, and Mare Chiuso (2010, Blue Serge).

His most fully worked-out quintet record is Radiomondo (2011, Blue Serge), recorded with accordionist Fausto Beccalossi, bassist Danilo Gallo, drummer U.T. Gandhi and keyboardist Patrizio Fariselli (a founding member of the Italian progressive-rock group Area), reworking Abdullah Ibrahim's "African Marketplace" and Jim Pepper's "Witchi Tai To" alongside Camardi's own compositions. Universi Diversi (2013) paired him with vocalist Antonella Ruggiero, formerly of Matia Bazar, with Beccalossi again on accordion. In 2019 he formed the Clacson Small Orchestra, a five-saxophone frontline (Camardi plus Ettore Martin, Enrico Di Stefano, Luca Ardini and Edoardo Brunello, with baritone saxophonist Yuri Argentino) and Cuban percussionist Ernesttico, for the album Hangar (Blue Serge), again narrated by Massimo Carlotto; trumpeter Paolo Fresu appeared as a guest soloist at the group's live launch concerts in the summer of 2019, a concert-bill credit documented in festival programming rather than on the record itself. Trouble (2020, Blue Serge) is a two-man session with guitarist Francesco Garolfi written for the Italian television crime series L'Alligatore, adapted from Carlotto's novels. Partigiani Sempre! (2023, Black Nota) reunited him with Carlotto and the folk-rock band Yo Yo Mundi for a record tied to the 80th anniversary of the Italian Resistance, and Il Respiro di Giotto (2025, Caligola) paired him with clarinetist Francesco Ganassin, with Carlotto again featured as narrator.

Camardi's discography also carries two earlier folk-scene sideman credits, on saxophone: the Friulian folk record Ciamp Dai Perdûz Amôrs (1980, Povolâr Ensemble) and Davide Terranova's Padova Sei Grande (1984). His most internationally visible side credit is a saxophone part on "Hasta Siempre Comandante" on the UK vinyl LP pressing of Robert Wyatt's Comicopera (2007, Domino Recording), an album Discogs tags across Jazz, Rock and Electronic. Earlier in his career he was a member of two ensembles led and conducted by fellow Italian saxophonist Claudio Fasoli: the European Music Orchestra, on baritone saxophone on the 1994 Soul Note release Guest, and the Sax Appeal Saxophone Quartet, on baritone saxophone and as coordinator on Giotto (1995, Soul Note).

Camardi's own biographies also list collaborations with trumpeter Paolo Fresu as a Gershwin Jazz Orchestra guest soloist, and with trumpeter Enrico Rava, pianist Stefano Battaglia and pianist Franco D'Andrea; none of these four is independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level and they are noted here as biographical claims rather than verified recording credits.

Camardi's catalog sits inside Italian ethno-jazz: a working saxophone technique carried across the whole reed family, folded together with the Armenian duduk, the ciaramella and other folk winds, and repertoire that draws as readily on Sardinian, Mediterranean and Latin American material as on jazz standards. Nine of his eleven leader and co-leader albums carry Discogs' "Jazz" genre tag; the two exceptions, Cristiani di Allah and Partigiani Sempre!, are the two records built most explicitly around a literary or historical narration (Carlotto's novel, the Resistance anniversary) rather than around the horn.

A second constant is his working relationship with Massimo Carlotto, whose novels and narration appear across Cristiani di Allah, Energie Positive, Hangar, Trouble, Partigiani Sempre! and Il Respiro di Giotto - six of his thirteen leader or co-leader releases. The Radiomondo quintet, with Beccalossi, Gallo, Gandhi and Fariselli, is the clearest single statement of his jazz-band writing outside the narration-led projects.