Nunzio Rotondo was born on December 11, 1924 in Palestrina, near Rome, and trained at the city's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, starting out on piano before switching to trumpet. Wikipedia's account, echoed in his own Spotify artist biography, says that by the end of the 1940s he had already performed alongside a touring Louis Armstrong, though no session credit or record confirms which engagement.

In 1949 he formed the Hot Club Rome sextet with Franco Raffaelli (alto saxophone), Ettore Crisostomi (piano), Carlo Pes (guitar), Carlo Loffredo (bass) and Gil Cuppini (drums), one of the working groups that anchored Italy's earliest organized jazz scene. Discogs confirms the same lineup, credited as the Sestetto Nunzio Rotondo Dell'Hot Club Di Roma, on the track "Move" (Ricordi's 1963 anthology 40 Anni Di Jazz In Italia and Musica Jazz's 1988 Italian Jazz Graffiti) and on "Stelle Filanti" and "Embraceable You" (the latter on Nunzio Rotondo Vol.1, Columbia, 1967, compiling his March 1952 Milan sessions).

On the night of March 29, 1952, Rotondo was introduced by Charles Delaunay for his debut at the Salon du Jazz in the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the same stage that had hosted Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Through the early 1950s he moved from swing toward bebop, leading and co-leading small groups with Cuppini and pianist Romano Mussolini, and recording for Columbia's "Italian Jazz Stars" series alongside Romano Mussolini, Roberto Nicolosi and Cuppini.

By 1957 and 1958 Rotondo was leading his own quartets and larger ensembles on record. The Artistry Of Nunzio Rotondo (Music, 1959, recorded 1957-58 with a cast billed as the Italian All Stars) puts him with Cuppini, Gino Marinacci on flute and baritone saxophone, bassist Berto Pisano and, on two tracks, a Paris-based rhythm section of pianist Raymond Fol and bassist Gilbert Rovère alongside tenor saxophonist Enzo Scoppa. In 1958 RCA Italiana issued Romano Mussolini Con Nunzio Rotondo E Lilian Terry, co-billing Rotondo's trumpet (on "Thaganoghi" and "Noghitonghi Thagani," with Marinacci's baritone saxophone and Mussolini's piano) alongside vocalist Lilian Terry, who sings on three other tracks of the same LP. In January 1958 his quartet and his ten-piece Tentette both appeared at the Sanremo Jazz Festival, the Tentette's "The Men Blowin'" pairing him again with Marinacci and Cuppini.

During the 1960s Rotondo largely stepped back from public performing and recording to work inside Italian state broadcaster RAI, where his radio ensembles brought together Franco D'Andrea, Mal Waldron, Gato Barbieri, Maurizio Majorana, Dodo Goya, Roberto Podio, the Swiss drummer Pierre Favre and Franco Tonani. Discogs also credits him as a member of Piero Piccioni's orchestra on several of Piccioni's Rome film scores from this period, among them Congo Vivo (1962) and Un Tentativo Sentimentale (1963), and on a 1969 RAI-affiliated children's theatre recording, Il Principe Fantasioso - soundtrack and broadcast work rather than jazz, and the only real secondary strand in an otherwise jazz-centered career.

In the early 1970s Rotondo returned to live performing with a new quintet featuring Enzo Scoppa on tenor saxophone, D'Andrea on piano, Bruno Tommaso on bass and Franco Mondini on drums. His RAI radio sessions from across the 1960s and 1970s, featuring the musicians named above plus Marinacci, were eventually compiled and released decades later on two Twilight Music archival CDs, Sound And Silence (2005) and The Legend (2007), drawing on material recorded between 1964 and 1980. In his later years live appearances became increasingly rare, and his musical presence was mostly confined to radio. Nunzio Rotondo died in Rome on September 15, 2009, at eighty-four.

Rotondo's trumpet sits at the point where Italian jazz turned from swing and early bebop toward the cool style: reviewing the reissued Artistry Of Nunzio Rotondo, the critic George W. Harris of Jazz Weekly placed his tone and phrasing in the lineage of period Miles Davis and the Birth of the Cool / Shorty Rogers school, a comparison the record's mix of standards, bebop repertoire (Charlie Parker's "Scrapple From The Apple," Denzil Best's "Move") and his own original small-group writing supports. His RAI years reflect a different, equally important role: as one of the musicians Italian state radio relied on to keep a dedicated jazz presence on the air through the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when live jazz work in Italy was scarce, alongside visiting and expatriate improvisers such as Mal Waldron, Gato Barbieri and Pierre Favre.