Stefano Benini is a Verona-born flutist who has spent more than four decades building one of Italy's most distinctive jazz careers around an instrument classical training did not prepare him for. He earned his flute diploma at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Turin in 1981, then turned away from the classical repertoire to study jazz, attending seminars with Mal Waldron and winning a 1986 scholarship to study with Steve Lacy.

In 1986 he co-founded the Tu Whit, Tu Whoo Trio with guitarist Enrico Terragnoli and percussionist Sbibu, a group that folded Indian and other non-Western percussion textures into its sound across four albums between 1989 and 2000: Tu Whit, Tu Whoo (1989, recorded at the Il Posto studio in Verona), Gradini Di Dúva (1990), L'Ombra (1994) and Ascriptum (2000). The trio also scored theatre pieces by the director Duilio Del Prete. Through the 1990s Benini ran a parallel co-billed quintet partnership with tenor saxophonist Beppe Castellani, issuing three albums together: Italian Standards: A New Page, Ninetysix and Raw Jazz.

Benini's leader and co-leader catalog is built almost entirely around two-flute and small-group sessions. Flute Connection (1995, Splasc(h) Records) co-billed him with fellow Italian flutist Nicola Stilo. Flute Madness (2001, Splasc(h) Records) paired him on record with the American flutist Sam Most, who also wrote the preface to Benini's later instructional book. His Stefano Benini Quartet recorded Walking Flute (1999) and Fortynine Forever (2008), the latter drawing on a deep bench of Italian players including bassist Danilo Gallo, pianist Marcello Tonolo and tenor saxophonist Pietro Tonolo. In 1993 he appeared as a credited flutist in the large Venice ensemble Il Suono Improvviso on Lee Konitz E Il Suono Improvviso A Venezia, recorded with Lee Konitz as featured soloist.

From 2011 Benini became one of three flutists, alongside Michele Gori and Stefano Leonardi, in the ensemble Flut3ibe, recording Moire (2011) and the live album Live In Sant'Anna Arresi (2017, recorded December 2014). He has also pursued a Brazilian-music strand of his career, performing bossa nova with the project Itapua alongside the singer Diane Peters and recording occasional Brazilian-songbook sessions and compilation appearances.

A longtime educator as well as a performer, Benini taught music at middle schools in Buttapietra, in the province of Verona, until 2022. He wrote Il Flauto Jazz (Edizioni Curci, 2010), a history, repertoire and methodology guide to jazz flute with a preface by Sam Most, and has contributed a recurring column on jazz flute technique and history to the Italian flute magazine FA LA UT. According to Italian Wikipedia, he has repeatedly placed first in the flute category of Italy's national jazz critics' polls, including in 2010, 2015 and 2018.

Benini's playing sits outside the classical flute tradition he trained in, built instead around the vocabulary of bebop and post-bop saxophone and the jazz flute lineage of players like Sam Most, whom he eventually recorded and published alongside. His catalog alternates between two distinct modes: dense, horn-centric small-group jazz (the Stefano Benini Quartet, the Castellani quintet records) and lighter, texturally adventurous ensemble work that draws on world and Brazilian music (the Tu Whit, Tu Whoo Trio, the Itapua bossa nova project, the multi-flute group Flut3ibe). Across both modes the flute, rather than saxophone or trumpet, carries the lead voice, a choice that has made him one of the few Italian jazz musicians to build an entire performing and teaching career around the instrument.