Max Trabucco is a drummer, percussionist and composer born in 1989 in Mestre, in Italy's Veneto region, where he still lives and works. He began studying percussion as a child and went on to earn a first-level conservatory diploma in drums and jazz percussion at the "C. Pollini" Conservatory in Padua, followed by a second-level academic diploma with honors in jazz drums and percussion at the "A. Stefani" Conservatory in Castelfranco Veneto. He later completed a master's program at Milan's Civica Scuola di Musica (CEMM), where he studied under drummer Roberto Gatto; this teacher-student relationship is documented in Trabucco's own biography but is not independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level.

Trabucco's first working group was a family affair: in 2010 he and his brother, double bassist Marco Trabucco, formed Trabucco Bros, releasing the standards-based debut Open/Close (2011, Blue Serge, with guest guitarist Lanfranco Malaguti and saxophonist Nicola Fazzini) and the original concept album Orchestra (2013, Caligola), the latter expanding to a sextet with pianist Marco Ponchiroli and again featuring Malaguti on guitar. The same year he also founded Oirtrio with his brother and pianist Giulio Scaramella, a project built as an open-ended "musical laboratory" that later expanded into Oirquartett, joined by saxophonist Klaus Gesing for Making Friends (2013) and Oirquartett (2015), the latter winning the Chicco Bettinardi National Award for best debut work. A further expansion, Oirquintet, recorded ...E Penso a Te (2018, Abeat Records), an album of reinterpreted Italian songs cut at La Fabrique studio in France under the direction of veteran American recording engineer Al Schmitt and Steve Genewick.

In 2010 and 2011 Trabucco won first prize at the national "Giovani Musicisti" competition in Treviso and at the "Blow into the Nightfly" competition in Lignano Sabbiadoro. His debut as a solo leader, Racconti di una Notte (2016, Abeat Records), paired his drums with pianist Giulio Scaramella, bassist Simone Serafini and oud and guitar player Zoran Majstorovic; the album was cited among Italy's eighty most significant jazz releases of the year and was later reissued by Abeat Records on limited-edition vinyl. In 2018 he released a second leader album, Love Songs (Artesuono); a contemporaneous interview dates its release to April 30, 2018 (International Jazz Day), while his own official website's discography timeline lists it under 2020, a discrepancy this profile discloses rather than resolves. That same year, Flavio Caprera's Dizionario del Jazz Italiano (Feltrinelli) included Trabucco's biography among the youngest Italian musicians to be featured, and the Circolo del Jazz di Verona awarded him a merit plaque in memory of drummer Luciano Zorzella. In 2020 he won the national "Orchestra Aperta, la Conduzione Chironomica" competition and received a "Tomorrow's Jazz" award from Veneto Jazz with the Francesco Pollon trio.

In 2021 Trabucco was selected for the Orchestra Nazionale dei Giovani Talenti del Jazz under director Paolo Damiani, recording the live album Presto, Senza Fretta with the ensemble; this connection is documented in Trabucco's own biography but could not be independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level. The same year he co-founded Naviganti e Sognatori with guitarist Luca Falomi and double bassist Alessandro Turchet, a trio reworking maritime song traditions from Liguria, Venice, Naples and Friuli; its debut album, Naviganti e Sognatori (2021, Abeat Records), features bandoneonist Daniele Di Bonaventura as a guest on select tracks and was included in Musica Jazz's monthly critics' selection. A second chapter, Mare Aperto (2024, Abeat Records), brought Di Bonaventura back for the full album alongside vocalist Maria Pia De Vito.

Trabucco also works regularly as a sideman: he recorded Gravity (2022, Artesuono) as part of a trio with vibraphonist Luigi Vitale and bassist Mattia Magatelli, featuring trumpeter and trombonist Mirko Cisilino, and Duende (2022, Abeat For Jazz) alongside vocalist Rita Bincoletto and saxophonist Diego Vio, featuring violinist Anais Drago; he returned the favor as Drago's drummer on her own Releve Live (2025, Habitable Records, alongside clarinetist Federico Calcagno). Additional session credits, all Discogs-confirmed, include Nicola Cristante's Koan (2018, Dodicilune), the Giacomo Zanus Trio's Searching for the North (2018), Alberto Vianello's From Different Views (2021, Caligola), Alessandro Fedrigo's Onda M (2023) and Motus Leavus's Sifr (2023, Felmay). In 2022 he also performed with the Filarmonia Veneta orchestra under cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima, a credential from his own biography not tied to a Discogs release.

Since 2023 Trabucco has led the working quartet behind his third album as a leader, Convergence (2025, Abeat Records), an ensemble built entirely on monophonic instruments: his drums alongside bassist Federica Michisanti, alto saxophonist Manuel Caliumi and trombonist Federico Pierantoni. Trabucco also teaches; since 2023 he has directed the "Andrea Luchesi" music school in Silea, in the province of Treviso, and develops instructional drum methods with the publisher Cobert Edizioni Musicali. He endorses Vic Firth sticks, Remo drumheads and Zildjian cymbals.

Discogs disambiguates Trabucco's own artist entry (id 6739210, "Italian drummer, born in 1989 in Mestre") from a separate entity, "Massimo Trabucco" (id 7390085, listed with the name variation "Max Trabucco"), which carries only sound-engineering credits, not performance credits, on two releases by the Veneto heavy-metal band Fil Di Ferro (2004) - a genre and a role entirely outside this profile's jazz scope. The two entities may or may not be the same individual; this profile treats only the drummer's own Discogs-documented jazz catalog as his identity and does not conflate the two.

Trabucco's drumming spans a wide stylistic range within Italian jazz, from the acoustic, oud-inflected mainstream jazz of Racconti di una Notte to the fully harmony-free "horizontal writing" of Convergence, where overlapping monophonic lines from saxophone, trombone and bass replace a chordal instrument. He has cited drummer Mark Guiliana's approach to melodic layering as a direct influence on that latter project, alongside Avishai Cohen and Antonio Sanchez as touchstones for balancing groove with space, and has described Convergence as including a compositional homage to Max Roach. A separate, folk-inflected strand of his work runs through Naviganti e Sognatori and Duende, both of which draw on Mediterranean and Italian regional song traditions rather than the jazz standard repertoire, placing Trabucco's catalog at the intersection of contemporary post-bop drumming, avant-garde composition and ethno-jazz.