Trained as a jazz player, he has made excursions in rock and most importantly in free improvisation. A founding member of the collective BASSESFERE, he has been active with many groups, including Vakki Plakkula, Specchio Ensemble, and Duo Travagliando, and has performed with Giancarlo Schiaffini, Antonello Salis, Tony Coe, Mike Patton, Chris Cutler, Otomo Yoshihide, René Lussier, and Jean Derome. His projects range from avant-prog to experimental sound art based on a mechanization of the drum set. He is also an active sculptor.

Sabatini came to music relatively late, starting to learn drums by himself in his late teens. At age 20, he entered the Jazz University in Terni, where he remained from 1987 to 1989 for his only formal musical education. He began to perform professionally around 1990, first with jazzmen like Massimo Urbani and Carlo Gatteschi. Around the same time, he met saxophonist Edoardo Marraffa, who introduced him to free improvisation.

The drummer suddenly decided to give his young career a left turn. In 1992, he moved to Bologna (where Marraffa lived) to work on the free improv scene. He co-founded the association BASSESFERE (an avant-garde music promotion collective) with nine other young players. His interest in sculpture dates from the same period. At first, Sabatini split his time between the prog rock group Ella Guru and Domenico Caliri's Specchio Ensemble, a large avant-jazz group of BASSESFERE members. Subgroups began to multiply, as did festivals and events in Bologna. In 1996, Sabatini formed two trios: Trio Magneto with Vincenzo Vasi and G. Casadei, and Vakki Plakkula with Marraffa and Luigi Mosso. The latter is an avant-jazz/rock outfit not unlike Japan's Ruins, but with an added theatrical dimension that allowed the drummer to develop his acting talents. The group released Una Barca in 1996.

Sabatini spent the 1998-1999 season in Montreal (Canada), working with members of the Ambiances Magnétiques collective (which shares similarities in structure and objectives with BASSESFERE): Derome, Lussier, and Diane Labrosse. More importantly, he and sound artist/engineer Jean-Pierre Gauthier formed the Duo Travagliando, a unit working with electronics and basic mechanics to automate a drum set. Back in Bologna, he continued to work with Gauthier, Vakki Plakkula, and the newly formed quartet Atman. The label Ambiances Magnetiques released his first solo album, -28+Alieni (an extension of his experiments with Duo Travagliando), under the moniker Mk. Orchestrin. ~ François Couture