Salvatore Maiore was born in 1965 in Sassari, Sardinia. He completed classical studies and earned a double bass diploma from the Conservatorio di Cagliari in 1990 under Maestro Rinaldo Asuni, then won a scholarship to the Corso di Alto Perfezionamento (advanced perfecting course) in Saluzzo. From 1997 he also took up the cello, self-taught, and has alternated the two instruments in concert and on record ever since.

In 1992 he moved to Milan, where his biography credits early work in Franco Cerri and Enrico Intra's quartet, the Sardinia Quartet (winner of a jazz contest in Milan) and Arrigo Cappelletti's New Latin Ensemble; none of these predate his recorded discography and are not independently verifiable at the Discogs credit level, so they are stated here as biographical claims rather than confirmed credits. He settled in Verona in 1993. Through the following decade he was a regular member of Turin-born, Mantua-based composer Simone Guiducci's Gramelot Ensemble, documented on Sciarivari' (1996, with special guest Gianni Coscia), Cantador (2000), Chorale (2002), Dancin' Roots (2004, with the American clarinetist Don Byron) and Storie Di Fiume (2006); the Gramelot Ensemble won a jazz competition in Vienne, France, according to All About Jazz.

From 1996 Maiore was the bassist in the Friulian pianist Glauco Venier's trio with drummer Roberto Dani, recording L'Insiùm (Nota, 1996), Seasons (Nota, 1999), Gorizia (Artesuono, 2000, with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and saxophonist Klaus Gesing) and the Gesing-led quartet album First Booke Of Songes (ATS Records, 2000). The same trio, expanded to a quintet with trumpeter David Boato and saxophonist Marcello Allulli, recorded Mufloni (Splasc(h), 2000) with liner notes by Enrico Rava.

In the mid-2000s Maiore built a parallel catalogue of chamber-string jazz: Viola Trio (Caligola, 2005) with violist Paolo Botti and drummer Tony Moreno, and La Mala Afinación (Palomar Records, 2006), a strings quartet with violinist Emanuele Parrini, Botti and bassist Giovanni Maier, tagged Free Jazz on Discogs. He later joined the same circle of players, plus saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano and drummer Dani, on Ottaviano's Arcthetics - Soffio Primitivo (Dodicilune, 2013), playing cello alongside Maier's double bass and Botti's viola. With clarinetist and saxophonist Achille Succi he recorded the duo album Pequenas Flores Do Inferno (El Gallo Rojo, 2006) and the group album Terra (Splasc(h), 2006, credited to the Achille Succi Ensemble), and the two also co-founded Tirodarco, a string-and-clarinet quartet with violinist Dimitri Sillato and bassist Roberto Bartoli, formed in 2005 and recording its self-titled album for El Gallo Rojo in 2009.

With guitarist Peo Alfonsi and accordionist Fausto Beccalossi, Maiore co-founded the trio Ammentos around 2003, recording Ammentos (Velut Luna, 2004) and Remarkramer (Velut Luna, 2006), a tribute to the Italian accordionist and composer Gorni Kramer; the group won the Kramer Prize in 2008. Maiore and Peo Alfonsi also recorded as a trio with Dani on Amada (Splasc(H) Records, 2006) and as a duo on Alma (Fonè Jazz, 2015), and both played on clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi's Canto Di Ebano (EGEA, 2008), alongside percussionist Alfred Kramer; the album was voted best record of 2008 in Musica Jazz magazine's annual Top Jazz poll. In 2004 Maiore also played double bass on Midsummer Night In Sardinia (Unione Sarda), a session led by the American fusion guitarist Al Di Meola and the Sardinian singer Andrea Parodi, alongside Alfonsi, saxophonist Gavino Murgia, Beccalossi and Dani.

Since 2007 Maiore has been the double bassist, with Dani on drums, in pianist Stefano Battaglia's trio, recording four albums for ECM: Re: Pasolini (2007, a double album dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini, with an expanded group including cellist Aya Shimura and clarinetist Mirco Mariottini), The River Of Anyder (2011), Songways (2013) and In The Morning (Music Of Alec Wilder) (2015), all produced by Manfred Eicher. In free improvisation he recorded Nimoy (Punto Rojo, 2011, cello) with saxophonist and clarinetist Francesco Bigoni and drummer Zeno De Rossi, taped live in Bologna in 2008.

More recently, Maiore reunited with saxophonist Enzo Favata and guitarist Marcello Peghin, collaborators from early in his career, for the trio albums Secret Window (Hermes Records, 2017) and Song Book No. 1 (Da Vinci Jazz, 2019, with drummer U.T. Gandhi added), music that moves freely between jazz, Sardinian and Mediterranean folk idioms and electronics. He plays bass on Voices (Parallel Records, 2024), a quartet with vibraphonist Andrea Dulbecco, pianist Giovanni Ceccarelli and drummer Paolo Orlandi, and recorded Mingus World (Velut Luna, undated on Discogs) as a duo with singer Maria Vicentini. His most recent record is Heritage (Sardmusic, released June 2026), a duo with guitarist Bebo Ferra that, according to Italian press coverage, grew out of an idea by trumpeter Paolo Fresu at his Insulae Lab production center in Sardinia and sets to music the two Sardinian musicians' long-running collaboration.

Maiore began teaching jazz double bass at the Conservatorio di Verona in 2006 and is now a professor of jazz double bass at the Conservatorio di Musica "Arrigo Pedrollo" in Vicenza. Press profiles also credit him with concert and recording work, across what one bio calls forty years of activity, alongside Lee Konitz, Billy Cobham, Franco Cerri, Enrico Intra, Franco D'Andrea, Rita Marcotulli, Enrico Pieranunzi, Bruno Tommaso and the French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyen Le; none of these is corroborated by a Discogs release credit under Maiore's own artist entry, so they are reported here as biographical claims rather than verified collaborations.

Maiore works at the intersection of jazz improvisation and chamber music, and his doubling on cello alongside double bass is the signature of his catalogue: the Viola Trio, La Mala Afinación, Tirodarco and his contributions to Roberto Ottaviano's Arcthetics all use strings-only or strings-plus-reeds instrumentation closer to a new-music ensemble than a conventional jazz rhythm section. That same chamber sensibility carries into his long membership in Stefano Battaglia's ECM trio, where Discogs tags the records Contemporary Jazz and, on Re: Pasolini, Avant-Garde Jazz.

A second strand in his work draws on Sardinian and broader Mediterranean folk material: Ammentos sets Sardinian and Lombard traditional themes in a jazz idiom, Midsummer Night In Sardinia is a folk-fusion session led by a visiting American guitarist, and the trio with Enzo Favata and Marcello Peghin is described in Sardinian press as moving freely between jazz, world music and electronics. A third strand is outright free improvisation, heard on the duo album with Achille Succi and on Nimoy, both tagged Free Improvisation on Discogs, and on La Mala Afinación, tagged Free Jazz.