Zeno De Rossi is a drummer and composer born in Verona on September 10, 1970, and one of the most recorded rhythm-section players in Italian jazz, credited on 138 Discogs-logged releases between 1993 and 2025. He grew up around the instrument: his father played double bass and his older brother played percussion, and the family's record collection ran to Don Cherry's Complete Communion, Coltrane's Kulu Se Mama and Davis's Bitches Brew. He is self-taught, learning largely by watching and listening at the Verona club Il Posto, and bought his first full drum kit at seventeen with money earned waiting tables.

De Rossi was among the first Italian musicians to make contact with the New York downtown scene, playing more than once at Tonic, the scene's defining venue, and that connection shows up throughout his discography: American collaborators include saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Speed (the duo albums Ruins, Skirl Records, 2014, and the group Midnight Lilacs, 2013, with guest Marc Ribot), bassist Greg Cohen and cellist Hank Roberts. In 2011 Musica Jazz's Top Jazz critics' poll named him Drummer of the Year, and he also received the InSound trophy that year.

He is a founding member of the El Gallo Rojo musicians' collective, active since 2005, whose roster of interlocking bands (Mickey Finn, Gallo & The Roosters, Houdini's Cage, Orchestra Vertical, The Humans and others) makes up a large share of his sideman discography. Outside the collective, he has been the standing drummer in several of the longest-running units in Italian jazz: Francesco Bearzatti's Tinissima Quartet from its 2008 debut Suite For Tina Modotti through Zorro (2020), a relationship that reaches back to the Kaiser Lupowitz Trio's You Don't! in 1998; Franco D'Andrea's Quartet, Sextet, Octet and Piano Trio from 2004 to 2018; and Mauro Ottolini's Sousaphonix across five releases between 2009 and 2016. From 2003 to 2016 he was also the drummer in singer-songwriter Vinicio Capossela's touring and recording band, a pop/cantautore credit that sits outside his jazz catalog but is well documented on Discogs (Nel Niente Sotto Il Sole, 2006; Ovunque Proteggi, 2006; Da Solo, a live solo-piano-plus-guests record on which De Rossi plays bass drum and cymbals).

As a leader, De Rossi's catalog runs from the 2001 quartet record Sultry (Splasc(h) Records, with Stefano Senni, Chris Speed and Giovanni Maier) through the trio album Nimoy (2011, Punto Rojo, with Francesco Bigoni and Salvatore Maiore), the duo albums Ruins (2014, with Chris Speed) and Sleep Talking (2016, Artesuono, with Giorgio Pacorig), to his working trio with Pacorig and Bigoni, billed as the Zeno De Rossi Trio, which has released Kepos (2013, Musica Jazz/El Gallo Rojo), Elpis (2020, Skirl Records) and This Is Always (2022, Hora Records). His group Zenophilia, with Piero Bittolo Bon on alto saxophone and bass flute and Filippo Vignato on trombone, released its self-titled debut on AUAND in 2017, and Shtik, a flexible lineup drawing on Jewish musical traditions, has recorded since 2007 (Me'or 'Einayim, El Gallo Rojo, 2007).

De Rossi moves across the jazz spectrum from free improvisation to contemporary post-bop writing, and Discogs' own genre and style tags across his leader catalog reflect that range: Sultry carries Avant-garde Jazz, Free Jazz and Contemporary Jazz tags; Nimoy and Ruins are tagged Free Improvisation and Free Jazz; Sleep Talking, Zenophilia, Kepos and This Is Always are tagged Contemporary Jazz. That duality, abstract and groove-based by turns, matches his two main working contexts: open-ended duo and trio settings (with Chris Speed, with Pacorig and Bigoni) built around space and timbre, and the tightly arranged large-ensemble book he has played for two decades in Franco D'Andrea's and Francesco Bearzatti's groups. His time in Guano Padano, the instrumental trio with Alessandro Stefana and Danilo Gallo that draws on Ennio Morricone's film scores and American roots music, and his years behind Vinicio Capossela, point to the same range extending into Americana and song-based pop, genres that sit outside this site's jazz classification but that reviewers of his playing consistently note as part of his musical vocabulary.