Tony Cattano is a Sicilian-born jazz trombonist, composer and improviser who has spent nearly three decades moving between big-band, free-improvisation and chamber-jazz settings while also teaching the instrument at conservatory level. He started on violin at age seven before switching to trombone, and graduated from the "V. Bellini" music institute in Catania in 2000. Jazz pulled him in early: as a teenager he attended seminars led by Giorgio Gaslini, Paolo Fresu, Tony Oxley and Franco D'Andrea, and in 1999 and 2000 he won consecutive scholarships to the Siena Jazz summer seminars. That same year he joined the Orchestra Jazz del Mediterraneo (Mediterranean Jazz Orchestra), a Catania-based big band, where he played under guest conductors and soloists including Gianni Basso, George Gruntz, Bob Mintzer, Maria Schneider and Flavio Boltro.

In 2000 Cattano spent a brief period living in New Orleans, playing in rooms on and around Bourbon Street including the Maison Bourbon, Port of Call and the Maple Leaf Bar. The following year he represented Siena Jazz and Italy at the 12th International Association of Schools of Jazz (IASJ) meeting, hosted at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Through the 2000s he toured for three years with trumpeter Roy Paci's band Roy Paci & Aretuska, playing major Italian and European festival stages, and co-founded the musical collective Franco Ferguson. He has also led his own itinerant New Orleans-style brass outfit, the Streetwalker Band, since 1995, with which he won the jazz category of the T.I.M. international music tournament.

Cattano's recorded work splits between leader projects and an extensive sideman catalog. As a leader he fronts the Naca Quartet, with violinist Emanuele Parrini, bassist Matteo Anelli and drummer Andrea Melani, whose album Naca (Aut Records, 2016/2017) draws its title and imagery from the Sicilian cradle of the same name. He also co-leads Vocione, a long-running duo with singer and composer Marta Raviglia that has released three studio and live albums since 2010 (Vocione, Vocione - Le Armi Di Ares, and the 2020 live record Left Hand Theory), and fronts a separate octet project, Tony Cattano Ottetto. As a sideman, Discogs-verified trombone credits place him alongside Eddie Henderson (on the Andrea Gomellini Quartet's Four In Monk, Philology, 2007), Kenny Wheeler (with the Colours Jazz Orchestra on Nineteen Plus One, 2009), and Lawrence "Butch" Morris (on Possible Universe (Conduction(R) 192), Nu Bop Records, 2014), as well as John Tchicai (Open Orchestra's The Spiritual Man, 2008). He has recorded repeatedly with bassist Silvia Bolognesi, saxophonist Daniele Cavallanti, drummer Francesco Cusa and multi-instrumentalist Paolo Botti, and was featured on Top Jazz 2010, Musica Jazz magazine's annual critics'-poll compilation. His sideman work also extends outside jazz, with session credits for Italian pop and rock artists including Samuele Bersani, Piero Pelù, Virginiana Miller, Bobo Rondelli and the Americana-tinged group Guano Padano.

Since 2022, Cattano has taught Jazz Trombone, Compositional Techniques and Ensemble Music at the "G.B. Martini" Conservatory in Bologna. He lives in the Livorno area of Tuscany.

Note on a name that recurs in his discography: Carlo Cattano, who shares his surname and has recorded with him (together with Emanuele Parrini and Antonio Moncada on the track "Ntzu'"), is a separate musician and not a relative known to be documented in any source used for this profile; the two should not be conflated.

Cattano's output covers a wide stylistic range built on a traditional big-band and bebop foundation. His formative years were spent inside large jazz ensembles playing repertoire associated with Gianni Basso, George Gruntz, Bob Mintzer and Maria Schneider, and his own Andrea Gomellini Quartet session, Four In Monk, is a straight-ahead set of Thelonious Monk compositions recorded with Eddie Henderson. At the other end of his output sits a deep engagement with free improvisation and new-music ensembles - Butch Morris's conduction projects, the Daniele Cavallanti and Francesco Cusa circles, and Sicilian free-improv groups such as As Sikilli Ensemble and Open Orchestra, the latter alongside Danish reedman John Tchicai. His own Naca Quartet sits between these poles: a chamber-scaled, violin-trombone-bass-drums working group whose material draws on Sicilian folk imagery (the "naca," a traditional hanging cradle) filtered through a contemporary-jazz and cinematic sensibility. His long-running Vocione duo with vocalist Marta Raviglia widens that range further, built around voice-and-trombone arrangements of originals alongside jazz, Brazilian, spiritual, Renaissance and baroque repertoire.