Salvatore Bonafede was born in Palermo on August 4, 1962, to a family of jewellers. His father, Antonino Bonafede, was a self-taught jazz pianist and devotee of Erroll Garner, and it was through him that Salvatore came to the instrument at age four. His jazz education properly began at the Brass Group Jazz Club in Palermo in the early 1970s, where as a teenager he sat in on jam sessions alongside visiting Americans including Dexter Gordon and Woody Shaw, and Italian pianist Giorgio Gaslini. In 1973 he made his first television appearance on RAI 1's jazz program, conducted by Franco Cerri. He studied classical piano at the Conservatory of Palermo from 1974 to 1981 before turning fully to jazz.

In 1986 Bonafede won a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 1989 after private study with drummer Alan Dawson, pianist and teacher Charlie Banacos, and saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi; he toured Australia with Bergonzi's band in 1987-1988. He settled in New York from 1989 to 1994, a period that produced his debut as a leader, Actor/Actress (1990, Bellaphon), a quartet session with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Adam Nussbaum, and Salvatore Bonafede Trio Plays (1992, Bellaphon/Ken Music), a trio date with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Paul Motian that carried liner notes from pianist Paul Bley. He returned to Italy in 1994 and went on to work and record with Lester Bowie, Tom Harrell and Bobby Watson, and toured with guitarist John Scofield in 1995 and 1996.

Back on Italian ground, Bonafede built a catalog of his own alongside a dense web of sideman work. Ortodoxa (2001, Red Record) brought together saxophonist Rosario Giuliani, trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso and drummer Roberto Gatto, the same year Bosso also used Bonafede on piano for his own leader debut, Fast Flight (2000, Red Records), alongside Giuliani again. Journey to Donnafugata (2004, CAM Jazz), his best-known record internationally, is a jazz reworking of Nino Rota's score for Luchino Visconti's Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), cut with an international quintet of trumpeter Enrico Rava, guitarist John Abercrombie, bassist Ben Street and drummer Clarence Penn, with guitarist Ralph Towner and percussionist Michele Rabbia as special guests. Paradoxa (2005, Red Record), For the Time Being (2005, CAM Jazz) and Dream and Dreams (2006, CAM Jazz) followed in a similar contemporary post-bop vein. In 2010 he formed the Salvatore Bonafede Trio with fellow Sicilians Marcello Pellitteri on drums and Marco Panascia on bass, debuting on Sicilian Opening (2010, Jazz Eyes); Pellitteri later reunited with him as a guest on his own leader album Aquarius Woman (2016). That same August 2010 also produced a trio session with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Billy Hart, recorded after a run of Italian tour dates; the album, Modus Operandi (Red Records), is scheduled for release on October 30, 2026, sixteen years after it was recorded. Bonafede and Gomez have continued to perform together since, including in the touring Eddie Gomez Italian Quartet with trumpeter Alessandro Presti and drummer Joe Santoro, active through the summer of 2026.

Bonafede also led a 2008 quintet session on trumpeter Dino Rubino's debut as a leader, Mi Sono Innamorato Di Te (Venus Records), alongside saxophonist Pietro Tonolo, and recorded the duo album Itinerari Siciliani (2011, AZ Productions) with reed player Pierre Vaiana. More recently he released the solo album Caro Luca (2021, Red Record) and SAL (Serenity and Love) (2024, MEM Limited). Among his students is pianist Rosario Di Rosa, who studied with him in Sicily for four years early in his career, by Di Rosa's own account; the relationship is documented on Di Rosa's official website and in Italian-language profiles rather than in any shared recording credit.

Since 1997 Bonafede has taught at Italian conservatories, holding tenure since 2001 and currently the chair in jazz piano at the Conservatory of Palermo; he has also given brief teaching stints in the United States (Harvard University, 1988; the South Australian C.A.E. School of Music in Adelaide and the Concord Community Music School in New Hampshire, both 1989) and master classes across Europe and in Haiti. Alongside performing and teaching, he has written scores for Sicilian filmmakers Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco, winning Best Soundtrack in 2003 for Il ritorno di Cagliostro and a 2015 David di Donatello award for his music for Belluscone. Una storia siciliana (2014); he also co-created concert-shows with Maresco tied to clarinetist Tony Scott and saxophonist John Coltrane.

Bonafede works from a bebop-and-post-bop foundation shaped directly by his Berklee training and his early-1990s New York years, and Discogs tags several of his mid-2000s trio records (For the Time Being, Dream and Dreams) as Contemporary Jazz and Post Bop. That mainstream footing sits alongside a recurring pull toward narrative and place: Journey to Donnafugata reworks Nino Rota's Sicilian film score, Plays Gershwin (1998, Splasc(H) Records) is a full album of American-songbook repertoire, and his film and theater scoring for Ciprì and Maresco runs in parallel with his jazz catalog rather than apart from it. His working units have ranged from the international, American-anchored quintet of Journey to Donnafugata to the all-Sicilian Salvatore Bonafede Trio with Pellitteri and Panascia, and his teaching post at the Conservatory of Palermo places him among the formal gatekeepers of jazz piano instruction on the island.