Maurizio Rolli was born in Pescara, in Italy's Abruzzo region, on June 22, 1965. He studied double bass and jazz at the Conservatorio "Luisa D'Annunzio" in his home city, the same school where he now teaches electric bass and jazz double bass. He has been active in jazz since the 1980s, with his performing career picking up through the 1990s.

By the mid-1990s Rolli was composer and arranger for the IS Ensemble, a project led by cellist and bassist Paolo Damiani, which released its self-titled album in 1996 on Via Veneto Jazz. The following year he recorded Norwegian Mood (Philology) with vocalist Diana Torto, joined by Damiani on cello, saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano and saxophonist Filiberto Palermini; the project won the Premio Barga Jazz. Rolli also played bass in two working groups from this period: R.A.R.E., an Italian-American quartet with percussionist Alex Acuna, pianist Otmaro Ruiz and saxophonist Gianluca Esposito, and X.PERIENCE, a trio with guitarist Hiram Bullock and drummer Israel Varela.

In 2000 Rolli took over as director of the jazz orchestra of the Accademia Musicale Pescarese, renaming it the A.M.P. Big Band, the group that would eventually become his own Rolli's Tones Big Band. With that orchestra he produced Moodswings: A Tribute to Jaco Pastorius (2001, on the Teen Town Club imprint, confirmed on Discogs under the title Moodswings (A Tribute To Jaco Pastorius)), released around the fiftieth anniversary of the bassist's birth and reviewed as a "CD of the month" by the American magazine Bass Player. The session drew a large cast of Italian musicians, including trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso, pianist Claudio Filippini, reedman Achille Succi and saxophonist Max Ionata, plus American bassist Michael Manring and guitarist Mike Stern.

Rolli's own quintet, Archivi Sonori, released its self-titled debut in 2003 on Wide Sound, dedicated to his composition teacher and mentor Alfredo Impullitti. The album paired his regular band, including vocalist Diana Torto, saxophonist Gianluca Esposito and drummer Paolo Corsi, with visiting American players Mike Stern, saxophonist Bob Mintzer, pianist Otmaro Ruiz and drummer Danny Gottlieb. A contemporary review in Jazzitalia praised his sound as "always well present and defined," describing a synthesis of American jazz tradition with a distinctly European sensibility.

The Rolli's Tones Big Band's Rolli's Tones (2009, Wide Sound) mixed original material with big-band arrangements of rock standards, and brought in guest soloists Peter Erskine, Achille Succi, saxophonists Bob Sheppard and Bob Franceschini, Stefano Cantini and Hiram Bullock, alongside Mike Stern again. The same year, the Polish luthier Mayones released a signature fretless bass model built to Rolli's specifications. In the years that followed he led the Rolli's Tones Big Band alongside guest engagements with larger American ensembles, including the Chicago Jazz Orchestra and the Metropole Orkest under conductor Vince Mendoza.

Rolli's other own-name leader releases include 7 in Latino (2013, Wide Sound), a Latin-jazz session with saxophonist Javier Girotto and several members of his earlier R.A.R.E. and X.PERIENCE lineups (Alex Acuna, Otmaro Ruiz, Israel Varela), and Sound Archives "Time Machine" (2025), again with Peter Erskine and Bob Mintzer; neither title is presently catalogued on Discogs, so both are sourced here to Rolli's own Bandcamp page and Italian Wikipedia rather than to Discogs credits. As a sideman he has also recorded with Angelo Valori's M.Edit Ensemble, the Milan-based Alexian Group, and guitarist Antonio Onorato, among others. He published a bass-method book, The Bass Journal: A Study Plan for the Contemporary Bassist, through Volonte in 2021, and continues to work as a consultant and endorser for the equipment makers Markbass and F-Bass.

Rolli's own catalog sits in the fusion and contemporary-jazz idiom that took shape in the 1970s: Discogs tags the large majority of his releases, as both leader and sideman, "Jazz" with "Fusion" or "Contemporary Jazz" as the recurring style. His two big-band projects, the A.M.P. Big Band's Jaco Pastorius tribute and his own Rolli's Tones Big Band, extend that fusion vocabulary into large-ensemble writing, arranging rock repertoire (Lennon-McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Yes) alongside originals in a jazz big-band frame. A Latin current runs through 7 in Latino, and the Norwegian Mood and Archivi Sonori sessions lean toward a more intimate, vocal- and reed-centered chamber-fusion sound. Critics describe his playing as combining an American fusion foundation with a distinctly European sensibility, and his composing career, from the IS Ensemble in the 1990s to his own big band today, has run in parallel with his work as a bassist throughout.