Paolo Vicari is a Sicilian jazz drummer born in 1992 in Enna. He began on piano at age six before switching to drums at his hometown's "G. Pascoli" school under Salvatore Borzillieri, then studied jazz drumming with pianist Giovanni Mazzarino at the Accademia Musicale Siciliana "Nino Rota." In 2012 he graduated in Drums and Jazz Percussion from the "Alessandro Scarlatti" Conservatory in Palermo with the top mark of 110 cum laude. In the 2014-2015 academic year he was the only Italian drummer selected for the KUG Jazz Institute in Graz, Austria, where he studied with American drummer Howard Curtis and Serbian trumpeter Stjepko Gut.

Vicari joined the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana, the resident big band of Palermo's Fondazione The Brass Group, in October 2015. He has since built a parallel career as a jazz educator: he became a Jazz Drums instructor at the Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali "Arturo Toscanini" in Ribera (AG) in November 2016, and at The Brass Group's own Scuola Popolare di Musica in Palermo from October 2018, later also teaching under a collaboration contract at the Conservatorio Toscanini itself. He has performed as drummer in trumpeter Roy Paci's theatrical production Carapace, and has played festivals including the Toronto Jazz Festival in Canada, the Gouvy Jazz & Blues Festival in Belgium, and Italy's own Pisa, Vittoria, Castelbuono and Taormina jazz festivals. During his student years he won several Italian jazz competition prizes, including the Pippo Ardini, Benedetto Albanese, Salvatore Gioia, G. Raciti and Marco Tamburini awards. The Brass Group's own artist page for Vicari also credits him with having performed alongside visiting international soloists including Bobby Watson, Russell Malone and Patti Austin; these dates could not be independently confirmed beyond that source and are reported here as circulating biography rather than as verified engagements (see notes.md).

On record, Vicari's Discogs-confirmed credits center on a Palermo circle built around saxophonist Claudio Giambruno. He is the drummer on Giambruno's Claudio Giambruno Quartet album Juiu (2018, AlfaProjects), alongside pianist Giovanni Conte and bassist Giovanni Villafranca, featuring Daniela Spalletta as guest vocalist. The same Villafranca-Vicari rhythm section reappears the following year on Introducing (2019, Comar 23), credited to the trio We3o - trumpeter Alessandro Presti, Villafranca and Vicari - with Giambruno himself as guest tenor saxophonist; Vicari is credited as composer of the closing track, "Ciccio." In 2022 he stepped into a co-billed leader role for the first time on Triazzo (Anaglyphos Records / Mhodi Music Company), a trio session with tenor saxophonist Rino Cirinna and double bassist Giuseppe Campisi, on which Cirinna also engineered the recording and wrote all seven compositions, including a version of Thelonious Monk's "Evidence."

Vicari's Discogs-tagged catalog spans two poles of small-group modern jazz: the trio session Triazzo carries both "Free Jazz" and "Contemporary Jazz" style tags, while his sideman work on Juiu and Introducing sits inside Claudio Giambruno's more song-based, standards-and-originals quartet and trio writing. His training runs a similarly wide range: a conservatory jazz-drums degree earned in Palermo, a year abroad at Graz's KUG Jazz Institute under an American drummer and a Serbian trumpeter, and a working chair in the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana, the Brass Group's own resident big band. That range carries into his teaching, where he has held jazz-drums posts at two separate Sicilian institutions since 2016.