Michele Polga is an Italian jazz saxophonist from the province of Vicenza in the Veneto region. He began studying piano in third grade and continued for six years through middle school, then joined his father's town band as a teenager and chose saxophone as his instrument. As a young player he attended a music school in Bassano del Grappa directed by Lilian Terry and named for Dizzy Gillespie, where, by his own account, saxophonist Maurizio Caldura Núñez was decisive in guiding him toward jazz. Polga has called Maurizio Caldura Núñez, who died in 1998, the teacher who shaped his direction as a musician; no Discogs session credit links the two men directly, since Polga's own recording career had barely begun by the time of Caldura's death.

Polga completed a seven-year classical saxophone diploma at the Giovanni Battista Martini Conservatory in Bologna, then a specialized three-year jazz course at the Antonio Bomporti Conservatory in Trento under Franco D'Andrea. He attended Veneto Jazz's summer clinics, run in partnership with the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with American saxophonist Dick Oatts, whom he has described as a true mentor, and went on to Siena Jazz seminars and a scholarship to International Association of Schools of Jazz clinics that took him to Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has since held a teaching post at the Padua Conservatory. Michele Polga's own website and his SmallsLIVE and All About Jazz musician pages, cited below, do not give a birth year; none could be confirmed in any source consulted for this profile.

His debut recording as a leader was Newthing Quartet (2000, Panic), made with pianist Michael Lösch, bassist Beppe Pilotto and drummer Enzo Carpentieri, all early collaborators from the Vicenza-Venice-Padua regional scene alongside pianist Marcello Tonolo, pianist Paolo Birro and bassist Marc Abrams. Movin' House (2004, Caligola) followed as his first fully solo-billed album, a quartet with Tonolo on piano, Abrams on bass and Walter Paoli on drums, with trumpeter Marco Tamburini as a guest on the session, Discogs-verified. The same year he co-led La Première Heure (2004, Azzurra Music), a trio billing with drummer Massimo Chiarella and bassist Andrea Lombardini. Clouds Over Me (2009, Caligola) is a quartet date with Birro, bassist Stefano Senni and Paoli, all Discogs-credited on tenor saxophone alongside Polga's own compositions.

Polga's best-known project paired him directly with trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso under joint billing: Michele Polga Meets Fabrizio Bosso: Live at Panic Jazz Club (2011, Abeat Records) and the follow-up Michele Polga Meets Fabrizio Bosso Studio Session (2013, Abeat Records), both with pianist Luca Mannutza, bassist Luca Bulgarelli and drummer Tommaso Cappellato, all Discogs-verified. In 2014 he co-led Puccini in Jazz (Caligola) with Tonolo, Chiarella and bassist Domenico Santaniello, a set of jazz reworkings of themes from Puccini operas including Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Little Magic (2015, Caligola) returned to the working quartet of Birro, Senni and Paoli.

After a decade away from leader recording, Polga released Doors (2025, Red Records), a quartet date with pianist Alessandro Lanzoni, bassist Gabriele Evangelista and drummer Bernardo Guerra, built mostly from his own compositions sketched over the preceding decade, plus Benny Golson's "Along Came Betty," all Discogs-verified. The same year brought two more releases: Six Friends for Bicio (2025, Caligola), a tribute led jointly with Tonolo and trumpeter Giampaolo Casati to the late Maurizio Caldura Núñez, performed at festivals including Dolomiti Ski Jazz and BargaJazz, and Big Pulse (2025, Caligola), a live duo billing with bassist Lorenzo Conte featuring pianist Dario Carnovale and drummer Pasquale Fiore, recorded in concert at Planet Sound in Gallarate. In 2026 he joined pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, bassist Thomas Fonnesbaek and drummer Mauro Beggio as an equal partner, with no designated leader, on Perspectives (2026, Red Records), to which Polga contributed three original compositions.

As a sideman Polga has been a recurring voice in trumpeter Massimo Donà's various projects, credited on tenor and other saxophones across Big Bum (I Ritmi Della Creazione) (2009), Il Santo Che Vola (2016), Iperboliche Distanze (Le Parole Di Andrea Emo) (2020) and Magister Puck (2021), all Discogs-verified. The Iperboliche Distanze session also brought in Claudio Fasoli on soprano and tenor saxophone and Enrico Rava on flugelhorn as guests, a shared Discogs release credit rather than direct interplay with Polga on a shared track. He also recorded Cromosoma Alfa (2011, Caligola) with the Otello Savoia Quintet alongside fellow saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti, and played on Marcello Tonolo's Skrjabin in Jazz (2018, Caligola) alongside Beggio and Santaniello, and on Tonolo's big-band project Note Sui Sillabari (2022, Arte Sonora). He is also Discogs-credited on trumpeter Marco Tamburini's Frenico (2006, Caligola), on which Tonolo also plays piano, and on the Fabrizio Bosso Quartet and Paolo Silvestri Ensemble's Duke (2015, Verve Records), a Duke Ellington tribute on which pianist Julian Oliver Mazzariello also appears. Additional sideman credits include Riccardo Chiarion's Sirene (2012, Caligola), Attilio Pisarri's Elektroshot (2017, Nkt) alongside Lombardini, and Giulio Campagnolo & The Jazz Funkers' C'mon! (2024, Irma Records). Polga is also a Discogs-listed member of the Thelonious Monk Big Band, the ensemble of the Dolo music school Caldura Núñez co-founded, which has kept several of Caldura's compositions in its repertoire since his death. Per his own artist biography and press interviews, Polga has also performed with Paolo Fresu, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Maria Schneider and Dee Dee Bridgewater, none of which could be independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level for this profile.

Polga works in a modern mainstream idiom rooted in hard bop and post-bop, built on original compositions alongside jazz-standard arrangements. He names Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and Cedar Walton among his stylistic touchstones on tenor saxophone, and has also pointed to contemporary, non-jazz influences including Ryuichi Sakamoto and the Robert Glasper Experiment. His catalog ranges from small-group hard-bop dates (the Bosso duo billing, the working quartets behind Clouds Over Me, Little Magic and Doors) to more exploratory sideman work inside Massimo Donà's spoken-word and multimedia jazz projects, and to repertoire projects such as Puccini in Jazz that recast operatic themes as jazz vehicles.