Roberto Gatto's professional career started in 1975, when he was sixteen. He took the drum chair in the Trio di Roma, the house trio at Rome's Music Inn, alongside pianist Danilo Rea and bassist Enzo Pietropaoli, backing the American jazz musicians who came through the city. All three would go on to become defining figures in Italian jazz.

He didn't stay a sideman for long. By 1983, Fare Musica magazine's monthly readers' poll had already named him the best drummer in Italy, a distinction the Musica Jazz poll gave him again in 2007, 2009, and 2010, alongside two Top Jazz "Best Group" wins with Lingomania in 1983 and 1987. In the same period he began teaching, eventually holding the jazz drums chair at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory and spending over a decade on the faculty of the Siena Jazz seminars.

The records that carried his name outside Italy came on the Gala label in the late 1980s. Notes (recorded early 1987) brought in Michael Brecker as a guest on tenor saxophone, alongside a cast including Danilo Rea, Rita Marcotulli, and Enzo Pietropaoli. Its follow-up, Ask, did the same with John Scofield on electric guitar. Both records put an American star in the sideman's chair on an Italian drummer's own date, the reverse of the more familiar arrangement.

Gatto kept working both sides of that equation for the decades that followed. As a leader, his catalog runs from Luna and Jungle Three through Roberto Gatto Plays Rugantino, Traps, Deep, Sixth Sense, and NOW!, up to 2025's Live. As a sideman, his credits include Lee Konitz, Chet Baker, Bob Berg, Tommy Flanagan, Joe Zawinul, Joe Lovano, Phil Woods, and Miroslav Vitous, plus a long-running stretch backing Neapolitan singer Pino Daniele on the road and in the studio. He also recorded repeatedly with Enrico Rava, Paolo Fresu, Franco D'Andrea, Giovanni Tommaso, Rosario Giuliani, and Stefano Bollani over the years, a web of connections that runs through much of modern Italian jazz.

Alongside the drum kit, Gatto composes for film. He co-wrote the score for Nino Manfredi's Nudo di donna with saxophonist Maurizio Giammarco, and scored Mignon è partita with guitarist Battista Lena.

He has stayed active into his late sixties. In 2024 he recorded Something Bluesy and More, a piano trio session led by Franco D'Andrea with bassist Gabriele Evangelista, working through blues, Ellington, and Coltrane repertoire, followed by a 2025 live album on Parco Della Musica Records.

Gatto's playing sits inside the post-bop and modal jazz mainstream but reaches outward: the Gala-era records leaned toward fusion, the Around Zappa and Progressivamente - Omaggio Al Progressive Rock projects put him in direct dialogue with rock repertoire, and his tribute records (Shades Of Chet, Remembering Shelly) show a recurring interest in honoring specific American figures on his own terms rather than simply covering their books. His long-running work with singer Pino Daniele and his film-scoring output both reflect a musician equally comfortable inside a pop or cinematic frame as a straight-ahead jazz one.