Simone Guiducci was born in Turin on May 24, 1962 and came to the guitar self-taught, starting at twelve on the strength of Django Reinhardt's records and Jimi Hendrix's rock-blues. He studied privately with Mick Goodrick and John Scofield in the 1980s, earned a philosophy degree from the University of Bologna, and completed the Jazz Biennium at the Trento Conservatory with a thesis on Django Reinhardt, a subject he has returned to across his recording career.

His professional record begins in the late 1980s with clarinetist Mauro Negri's quartet Trapezomantilo, which won the 1991 Jazzcontest. The following year he co-led Poirot (1992, Splasc(h) Records), an unusual chamber quartet of clarinet, guitar, cello and drums with no bass, alongside Negri, drummer Riccardo Biancoli and cellist Marco Remondini. He made his leader debut under his own name with New Flamenco Sketches (1994, Le Parc), a quintet crediting trumpeter Enrico Rava and bassist Furio Di Castri alongside Negri and Biancoli, confirmed at the Discogs credit level.

In 1995 he founded Gramelot, a project built on what his own promotional material calls a creative dialogue between Italian folk themes and jazz improvisation. Its founding album, Gramelot (1995, Esagono Record), already carries a Discogs-verified credit for trumpeter Paolo Fresu alongside bassists Ares Tavolazzi and Salvatore Maiore. The project became a standing quintet, formally billed "Simone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble," with Achille Succi on reeds, Fausto Beccalossi on accordion, Maiore on bass and Roberto Dani on drums as its core across five albums for Felmay and Dunya: Cantador (2000), Chorale (2002), Dancin' Roots (2004), Storie Di Fiume (2006) and That's All Folks (2011, TRJ Records). Chorale added American trumpeter Ralph Alessi, cellist Erik Friedlander, vocalist Maria Pia De Vito and saxophonist Chris Speed as guests and placed sixth in Musica Jazz's 2002 critics' poll and in All About Jazz's top ten for 2003; Dancin' Roots added clarinetist Don Byron and pianist Andy Milne; That's All Folks added bassist Giulio Corini to the working band alongside a returning Alessi. An earlier Gramelot date, Sciarivari' (1996), carried accordionist Gianni Coscia as special guest alongside saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti, all Discogs-confirmed.

Guiducci has returned to Django Reinhardt's book twice as a leader in his own name: Django's Jungle (2001, Splasc(h) Records), with clarinetist Chris Speed, accordionist Gianni Coscia and violinist Florin Niculescu alongside Salvatore Maiore, and Django New Directions (2010, TRJ Records), an all-Reinhardt-repertoire session with Achille Succi, bassist Danilo Gallo and violinist Emanuele Parrini. A separate standards-and-Django co-led date, My Secret Love (2002, Abeat Records), credits Ares Tavolazzi on bass, Paolo Birro on piano, Riccardo Biancoli on drums and Javier Girotto on soprano saxophone, all Discogs-confirmed.

Guiducci teaches jazz guitar and improvisation technique at the Mantua Conservatory's jazz department, a post that followed earlier teaching appointments at the conservatories of Adria, Bari, Brescia and Trento; he has adopted Mantua as his home base. He has authored two instructional volumes on Django Reinhardt and jazz guitar methodology. His biographies also name collaborations with trumpeter Ralph Alessi, clarinetist Gianluigi Trovesi, bassist Eberhard Weber and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler; the Alessi connection is independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level above, while the Trovesi and Wheeler connections are not corroborated by a Discogs release credit under Guiducci's own artist entry and are reported here as biographical claims rather than verified collaborations. Eberhard Weber does appear as a Discogs-credited sideman on Guiducci's own Slang (2003, Abeat Records), alongside saxophonist Matt Renzi and drummer Stefano Bagnoli.

Italian and international press have followed his work since the early 1990s. Musica Jazz's Top Jazz poll placed him second in its emerging-talent category early in his career, and reviews have appeared in Jazzman (France), Jazz Review (UK), AudioReview, Suono, Giornale della Musica, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, the last of which praised his "remarkable variety of inspirations and refined compositional solutions." As of October 2026 he continues to perform and record; in July 2026 he appeared with a Simone Guiducci Special Edition Band at the Premio Kramer Jazz Night in Rivarolo Mantovano, a Mantua-province jazz festival date.

Guiducci's defining project, Gramelot, treats Italian and broader European folk material as source material for jazz improvisation rather than as decoration, a current often described in Italian criticism as suspended between folk and improvised music. His other sustained thread, running from his conservatory thesis through two full leader albums and a Django-tribute instructional methodology, is Django Reinhardt's gypsy-jazz vocabulary, filtered through a modern jazz guitar language shaped by his study with Mick Goodrick and John Scofield. The two strands meet in his working method: a stable quintet built around reeds, accordion, bass and drums rather than a conventional jazz rhythm section, opened periodically to visiting voices such as Ralph Alessi, Erik Friedlander and Maria Pia De Vito.