PH: Auditorium Parco della Musica / ROMA

Italian-German artist, Valentina, grew up in Lucca. Initially a pianist, she began playing the double bass in late 2009, graduating with honors from the L. Boccherini Music Institute in Lucca in October 2014. She then earned a Master of Performance (with honors) from the Royal College of Music in July 2016 and continued her studies at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance under the guidance of Leon Bosch, receiving scholarships from Trinity College London and the Leverhulme Trust. In 2018/19, she was awarded the Trinity Laban’s Carne Trust Junior Fellowship for an Individual.


Valentina also focused on composition, graduating with top marks in March 2014. She has won numerous awards and recognitions, including first prize in the RCM Double Bass Competition 2016, the Vernon Elliot Double Bass Competition 2018, the Vivian Joseph Classical Concerto Competition 2018 in the String category, and the De Simone and Partners prize at the Chamber Music Festival in Rome. She also won a scholarship to the Chigiana Academy for the summer of 2018 with Maestro Giuseppe Ettorre. Valentina has been a finalist in major national and international competitions such as the "Migliori Diplomati D'Italia" in 2015 and the "Double Bass International Competition Galicia Garcia Graves." She was selected with 16 other young double bassists from around the world to perform live in the final rounds of the worldwide solo double bass competition granted by the "Bradetich Foundation" in Denton, Texas, at the end of August 2017. Valentina has also won several orchestral auditions such as the Gustav Mahler Academy 2016 and the BBC SO training program. Recently, she was awarded the Artist in Residence prize at BANFF, Alberta (Canada), which hosted her from September 15 to 28, 2019.


She has performed as a soloist with "I solisti veneti" under Maestro Claudio Scimone and won the prestigious scholarship granted by this Academy (Proliber). She has performed as a soloist in prestigious London concert halls such as Wigmore Hall and St. Martin in the Fields and was invited to the pre-opening of Zappanale 2018 at St.Katharinen Kirche (Hamburg) with her Trio featuring saxophone virtuoso Napoleon Murphy Brock. Additionally, Valentina has been invited to perform at important institutions and has received commissions as a composer from organizations such as the Agnelli Foundation in Turin and Italian Cultural Institutes in Washington DC, Hannover, Wolfsburg and Stuttgart.

She received a scholarship from the Animando association in Lucca for a research project investigating the music of Giacomo Puccini's ancestors, and her work has been published in the Japanese press Da Vinci. She debuted her first solo album, Music from the Sphinx, in November 2019 and has released her second album Ruutsu in 2022 and 8 singles for Ulysses Arts Label in 2021. Her next album, Shake your Duty, has been released in May 2024 by Parco della Musica label (Rome). Valentina's work focuses on expanding the solo double bass repertoire by composing new virtuosic pieces, transcribing mainly Frank Zappa's repertoire, and performing new compositions written for her by many contemporary composers.


Currently, Valentina lives in London and is a double bass professor at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and she is the owner of the brand How I met Puccini® She also has extensive experience in jazz, performing at major jazz festivals such as the Dusseldorf Jazz Marathon, Villa Celimontana Jazz Festival, Tuscia Jazz, and Umbria Jazz Clinics, and reaching the finals in competitions such as Tuscia Jazz as the best double bass and electric bass player and the Nicola Tiberio Awards in 2012. She plays a 2014 Scipioni Bass made in Mantua and is a D'Addario artist.