Tiziano Fonsi was born in Rome on 4 October 1952. Blessed with a naturaltalent and strongly drawn to music, he cultivated his passion from an early age, beginning by playing in small groups, emulating the emerging Beat Generation. In 1969 he enrolled in the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he completed his studies, with a concentration in bass and percussion. His style at the time was much like that of the Italian groups then at the height of their popularity (Dik Dik, Nomadi, Equipe '84); perhaps even more important were the lessons of the best singer-songwriters (Gino Paoli, Bruno Lauzi, and Umberto Bindi, as well as the "new" Lucio Dalla and Francesco De Gregori), a number of whom he accompanied in concert. He is a well-rounded musician with a preference for the guitar and bass who is distinguished by his sensitivity and musical composition ability. A turning point in his career was his mid-1970s meeting and subsequent friendship with Sergio Endrigo, with whom he collaborated on the LP Sarebbe bello (It Would Be Beautiful), to which he contributed "I marinai" ("The Sailors"), "Ho sognato una donna" ("I Dreamed of a Woman"), and "Non ammazzate i bambini" ("Don't Kill the Children"). During a triumphal tour of Cuba and Latin America, he was impressed by the great Brazilian artists (he met some of the "sacred monsters," including the poet Vinícius de Moraes and Toquinho), who had a profound influence on his career.

In the early 1980s, as a guitarist, he was the backbone of the group that accompanied the singer Iva Zanicchi in her "golden years" (especially memorable was their highly successful tour of Argentina). Later, he devoted himself more to composition, deepening his musical ability through his love of experimentation. He also participated in numerous radio and TV broadcasts, demonstrating his abilities to compose signature tunes and documentary sound tracks (with a special ability to re-evoke medieval music) and developed as a "confidential" piano-bar musician, appearing, among other performances, on the Italian national broadcast service RAI with Gianni Meccia.

A shy, reserved artist who stays "far from the madding crowd," Tiziano Fonsi truly established himself as a soloist in the 1990s, uniting the classical tradition with a musical flexibility that carried him easily from the classics to New Wave instrumental music both intense and delicate, as demonstrated by the CD E la musica va (And the Music Plays). An interpreter, but above all a refined composer, he recently revisited Italian music classics on the CD Ricordando (Remembering). At present he is working on a CD of previously unreleased songs, some of his own composition and others based on the writings of the classical philologist Angelo Luceri.