Bassoonist Sergio Azzolini is one of Europe's most prominent performers on his instrument. He plays both modern and historical bassoons, and he is also a noted educator. Azzolini was born in 1967 in the northern Italian city of Bolzano. As a child, he gravitated toward painting, but his mother, believing that music would provide more stable employment in the remote Alpine city where there were few bassoonists, encouraged his talent on this instrument. Azzolini enrolled in 1978 at the city's Conservatorio Claudio Monteverdi, studying with Romano Santi until 1985. He moved on to the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover, Germany, where his teacher was Klaus Thunemann. By the time he finished his studies there in 1989, he was already playing with the European Union Youth Orchestra and taking solo bassoon parts. Azzolini's career was boosted by awards at the Prague Spring Festival, the International Carl Maria von Weber Competition, and the ARD Music Competition in Germany. Many of his efforts have been connected with chamber music; he is the founder of the ensemble Il Proteo and has also performed with the Ma'alot Quintet, the Sabine Meyer Bläserensemble, and the Maurice Bourgue Trio. Azzolini also plays historical bassoons and has appeared as a soloist with the historical-performances groups L'Aura Soave Cremona, La Stravaganza Köln, and Sonatori della Gioiosa Marca, as well as playing in several historically-oriented chamber ensembles. Azzolini has appeared on well over 50 recordings, dating back to a 1990 album of Mozart wind serenades with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. He has recorded for Chandos, Naïve, and Sony Classical, among other labels, releasing an album of concertos and orchestral music by Leopold Kozeluch on the latter in 2021. By that year, he had reached the fifth volume of a complete series of Vivaldi's 39 bassoon concertos, being issued as part of Naïve's Vivaldi Edition.