SINGER MUSICIAN COMPOSER

She began her music journey studying oboe, sax, singing and composing. But her passion for jazz lead her at University of Massachusetts, specializing with Yusef Lateef and Sheila Jordan.
She has been living in Paris since 1993, where she soon distinguished herself as an all- round jazz and world music singer and in theater as a scene-music composer, musical director, and choreographer, collaborating with companies such as Ecla Theatre, La NumeriCie, La Toscana, Est en Ouest, Le Grenier de Babouchka.
Parallel to her concert activity and composer, she earns a degree of sound engineering, from the CFPTS in Paris.
She teaches at CIM, one of the most prestigious European schools of jazz and contemporary music.
Her first album pays homage to Chet Baker, and embarks on a more personal path with a repertoire of compositions and arrangements of themes from the Mediterranean tradition, collaborating with Alain Jean Marie, Gilles Naturel, Philippe Soirat, Giovanni Mirabassi, Paolo Fresu, Olivier Hutman, Kristof Bacso and many other artists on the international jazz music scene.  With Viva la Black project she has participated in major European jazz festivals along with Minafric Orchestra, the iconic south-african drummer Luis Moholo-Moholo and under the direction of Keith Tippetts. She has been a prominent figure in major European world music festivals, flanking Dj Click and virtuoso players of tzigane Romanian and Indian music. With the same project she has toured in China, Japan, Korea, India, South Africa and South America, and has produced two CDs.
In 2012 she was awarded the “Premio Maria Carta”. Engaged in the study of the potential of sounds and voice, she has carried out research on popular chants all around the world. This has taken her to collaborations over the past 20 years with guitar player Jean Luc Roumier on the international scene. Their duo has a repertoire from popular and gypsy culture, arranged and interpreted in 20 original languages, an invitation to travel, an ideal walkway between their origins and those of unknown lands.
In 2015 the double-bass player Nicola Cossu joined the duo; in 2018 the percussionist Enrico Locci did as well. The quartet’s repertoire is mainly Valentina’s original compositions.