Pino Iodice - born Giuseppe Iodice in Naples on 27 May 1965 - is a jazz pianist, composer, arranger and conductor whose four-decade career runs from Neapolitan club dates to directing conservatory big bands. He earned a classical piano diploma in 1987 from the Conservatorio "D. Cimarosa" in Avellino (the "V. Vitale" piano school), studying jazz piano in Siena under pianist Franco D'Andrea at the same time, and went on to complete a jazz composition and arranging diploma with top marks. He records and performs under two spellings of his surname: "Iodice" on his earlier work and the surname he shares with his brother, and "Jodice" - his own preferred spelling since roughly 2011 - on his website and most of his later quartet, orchestra and duo recordings. Discogs carries both as separate artist entities, confirmed to be the same person by shared session credits and independent press coverage (see Full Discography).

Iodice made his debut as a leader in 2003 with Suspended (UM Records), released on the label tied to Rome's Universita della Musica, where he has directed the school's Musical Laboratories courses. The album features his brother, drummer Pietro Iodice - also independently profiled on this site - alongside saxophonists Daniele Tittarelli, Max Ionata and Sandro Deidda, bassist Gianluca Renzi and a spoken-word guest spot from actor Alessandro Haber. The two brothers went on to record together again in 2018 as the Pino Jodice Jazz Trio on Infinite Space (Cose Sonore), with bassist Luca Pirozzi completing the group.

Iodice's central creative partnership, spanning nearly two decades, is with pianist and accordionist Giuliana Soscia, who is also his wife. He joined her first tango-jazz quartet as pianist in 2006-2007, and the two have co-led the Giuliana Soscia & Pino Jodice Quartet ever since, moving from the Piazzolla-indebted tango jazz of Latitango (2008) and Antiche Pietre (2009) through straight-ahead jazz originals on Contemporary (2012), Arabic maqam on Il Viaggio di Sindbad (2012, with oud player Raed Khoshaba) and a jazz reworking of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater on Stabat Mater in Jazz (2014, recorded live at the Cimarosa Conservatory in Avellino), to North Wind (2017), a Scotland-to-Mediterranean program built around Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith. The pair also co-founded and co-direct the Orchestra Jazz Parthenopea, a roughly twenty-musician Naples big band whose live album Megaride (2017) features trumpeter Paolo Fresu; Iodice conducts five of the record's tracks and Soscia the other two.

Beyond the Soscia partnership, Iodice has built a parallel career directing and composing for conservatory and institutional big bands. He is currently a professor of Jazz Composition at the Conservatorio "G. Verdi" in Milan, where he also directs the Verdi Jazz Orchestra, the conservatory's own student big band; its 2024 album Flying Over The Clouds (Abeat Records) features saxophonist Emanuele Cisi as soloist across all seven tracks. He has taught jazz piano, composition, arranging, orchestration and improvisation at Italian conservatories including Santa Cecilia (Rome), "G. Martucci" (Salerno), "C.G. Da Venosa" (Potenza), his own "D. Cimarosa" (Avellino) and "G.B. Martini" (Bologna), as well as privately in Rome at Saint Louis Music Center and Accademia Romana, and has given masterclasses internationally, including representing Italy at the European Jazz Festival in Izmir, Turkey. As a pianist, composer and arranger he also collaborates with the Parco della Musica Jazz Orchestra in Rome and has worked with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, the Sardegna Jazz Orchestra and Italy's National Jazz Orchestra of the Conservatories.

His sideman discography, confirmed at the Discogs credit level, runs from 1992 to 2019 and includes dates with Neapolitan and Italian pop vocalists (Carmelo Zappulla, Tosca, Cinzia Tedesco), saxophonist Maurizio Giammarco's Megatones, guitarist Antonio Onorato, drummer Davide Pettirossi, the Dino E Franco Piana Jazz Orchestra of brothers Dino Piana and Franco Piana, trumpeter Andrea Tofanelli, and the Parco della Musica Jazz Orchestra's own Jazzitaliano Live 2007, on which Pietro Iodice also appears. He appears once, on a shared release-level credit, alongside saxophonist Javier Girotto's Vertere String Quartet on Nahuel (2006).

Iodice's honors include a dual "Best New Talent" award in 2002 at the Palazzo Valentini Jazz Prize (Rome) and the Positano Jazz Prize (Naples), first prize in the original-compositions category at "Scrivere in Jazz 2000" in Sassari, and second prize in the same category at the 13th "Barga Jazz 2000" in Lucca. His own promotional and institutional biographies, independently corroborated across more than one source, also credit him with jazz-world collaborators including saxophonist George Garzone, reedman Yusef Lateef, saxophonist Richard Galliano and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler; these are the artist's own stated credits rather than Discogs-documented recording sessions, and are reported here on that basis.

Iodice's work runs on three linked tracks: the big-band and orchestral writing he does as a conservatory director (the Verdi Jazz Orchestra, the Orchestra Jazz Parthenopea, guest work with the PMJO and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra); a long-running tango-jazz and world-jazz partnership with Giuliana Soscia that moves from Piazzolla through Arabic maqam to a Scottish-Mediterranean summit with Tommy Smith; and small-group piano-trio jazz, from his 2003 debut Suspended through the family trio with his brother Pietro on Infinite Space. His own training - classical piano first, then jazz piano under Franco D'Andrea and a formal jazz-composition and arranging diploma - shows in orchestral writing that favors through-composed arrangements over open blowing sessions, and in a teaching career built specifically around composition, arranging and orchestration rather than performance alone.