Paolo Nonnis was born in Selargius, on the outskirts of Cagliari, in 1950, and taught himself drums starting at age 14. His first bands were 1960s Sardinian rock and beat combos, including a group called I Blood, which worked cruise-ship contracts on Princess Cruises ships after building a following in Italian clubs. That cruise-ship work put him on a path that would define his career: five decades split between the United States and Sardinia, all of it eventually organized around big-band jazz.

Nonnis studied informally with drum educator Dom Famularo before relocating to Philadelphia in 1977, where he trained with Carl Mottola, a show drummer with the orchestra at Caesars Palace in Atlantic City, and worked in the Al Raymond Big Band, a swing ensemble built on 1940s repertoire. In 1980 he moved to Los Angeles and founded a rock big band called Deep Breath Inc., then in 1985 founded the Paolo Nonnis Big Band, which became one of the busier big bands in Southern California within a few years. The band's ranks drew from the city's working studio-jazz pool, including saxophonist Steve Marcus, alto saxophonists Joe Romano and Kim Richmond, and trumpeters Wayne Bergeron and Clay Jenkins. Nonnis also worked with a Tribute to Stan Kenton Orchestra directed by Dick Shearer and with the Hispanic Musicians Association Orchestra, which received a Grammy nomination in 1998.

In 1989, at Sardinia's Jazz in Sardegna festival, Nonnis led the Buddy Rich Orchestra, playing the repertoire of the drummer whose big-band style shaped his own. His Los Angeles band recorded two studio albums for USA Music Group, Just In Time (1991) and Step On The Gas (1992), both cut at Tomsonic Studios in Los Angeles and both featuring Steve Marcus; Just In Time drew four-star reviews in the Sardinian press. Through the 1990s and into the 2010s Nonnis shuttled between the United States and Sardinia, working at various points as Musical Director for Princess Cruises, before settling permanently in Villasimius, Sardinia, in 2009.

Back home, Nonnis rebuilt the same big-band model with local musicians. In 1993 he had already founded the Paolo Nonnis Maxiband, assembled entirely from young Sardinian players as the official orchestra for the tenth anniversary of the Jazz in Sardegna festival. He reformed the project in 2014 as the fifteen-piece Paolo Nonnis Orchestra, built on five trumpets, three trombones, five saxophones and a rhythm section, which became the resident big band at the Cagliari-area jazz club Jazzino, performing there weekly. The orchestra played EXPO Milano in 2015 with arrangements drawn from Just In Time and Step On The Gas, and its book grew to include tributes to Count Basie, Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra. In 2021 Nonnis co-founded the Sardica Orchestra Association with pianist Mauro Mulas and Rubens Massidda.

Teaching ran alongside performing for most of Nonnis's career. In Los Angeles he authored and produced "Jazz Adventure," a jazz-education program for the Music Center of Los Angeles County presented in elementary and middle schools across California. Back in Sardinia he taught drums privately and served on the faculty of Sinnai's civic music school, and in his later years devoted much of his time to training younger drummers. All About Jazz maintains a musician page for him, and Discogs separately documents him as drummer and orchestra leader on singer Karen Saunders' self-released 1999 cabaret album Cruisin' Live.

Paolo Nonnis died on March 2, 2026, at 76. Sardinian outlets covering his death described him as one of the people most responsible for building the island's jazz scene, citing a touring and teaching career that carried Sardinia's name from Philadelphia and Los Angeles back to the stages and jazz clubs of his home island.

Nonnis worked squarely in the swing and big-band tradition, the idiom he trained in under a Caesars Palace show drummer and Dom Famularo before spending the 1980s inside Los Angeles's working big-band circuit. Buddy Rich was his most direct model: he played and recorded Rich's book with his own Los Angeles orchestra, then led the actual Buddy Rich Orchestra at the 1989 Jazz in Sardegna festival. The same tribute-band instinct carried through the rest of his career, from the Stan Kenton tribute orchestra he played in during the 1980s to the Count Basie, Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra songbooks his Sardinian orchestra later performed. What distinguishes his catalog is the transplant: a fifteen-piece American-style swing big band, arranged and rehearsed the way he learned the format in Los Angeles, rebuilt in Sardinia entirely out of local musicians and kept working as a weekly jazz-club residency for over a decade.