BIOGRAPHY

A multifaceted artist with a unique ability to convey music to her audience with ease while maintaining the integrity and complexity of her artistic inspiration, Isabella Turso is known as one of the most representative composers of contemporary classical music.

She holds a master’s degree in piano and chamber music with honors at the Conservatory of Trento and subsequently refined her skills with great pianists such as Bruno Mezzena in Italy and Alicia de Larrocha in Spain. Her musical versatility ranges from classical music to jazz, rock, pop, and rap.

 

Throughout her rich and brilliant career, she has worked with a host of artists such as Pino Donaggio, Luis Bacalov, Andrea Morricone, Arnoldo Foà, Renato Raimo, David Riondino, Dario Vergassola, Luc Jacquet, Maurizio Dini Ciacci, Elio, Rui Massena, Dargen D’Amico, Tina Guo, IN-Q, and many others.

She served as pianist and assistant to the artistic direction for projects promoted by the J.Futura Youth Orchestra, with numerous concerts in Italy and abroad.

 

In 2013 she released her first album of original works for solo piano, “All Light,” published by Wide Sound Jazz, where she expresses her classical-pop-jazz style, receiving excellent reviews, including one by Francesco Alberoni in Il Giornale: “[...] I listen to her and decide that her “new way” must be highlighted immediately [...]”. 

Furthemore, she created a version for jazz trio and symphony orchestra with the extraordinary participation of trumpeter Paolo Fresu for four peaces extracted from the “All Light” album .

 

In 2012 she collaborates with American violinist Albert Stern, with whom she recorded several pieces she composed for ensemble at Morning View Studios in Malibu, California, all of which performed with the famous Violon Rouge “Mendelssohn,” a 1720 Stradivarius.

 

On December 25, 2014, she received an unexpected phone call from Maestro Ennio Morricone, who congratulated her on her piano arrangement of “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso,” recognizing talent and sensitivity.

 

In March 2014 in New York, at the Opera America Center, the album “Omaggio a Donaggio,” published by Kronos Records, was presented, in which Isabella elaborates famous themes by Venetian composer Pino Donaggio, drawn from film soundtracks, TV series, and songs (Io che non vivo, Come sinfonia). Pino Donaggio: “I wish to express my appreciation for the piano elaborations you created based on some themes taken from my songs. The project you intend to propose seems very interesting and stimulating because of its characteristics, namely the conjunction between music and image, which I feel very close to my sensibility.” The album received the highest rating from the specialized web magazine “ColonneSonore.net” “[...] the admirable technical-compositional work of the artist at the keyboard proves pleasant in its complex brilliance [...]”

On this occasion, musical theatre composer Maury Yeston (Nine, Titanic) described her as a “classical-jazz pianist, who performs her own pieces-written with an evident classical foundation-as if they were improvised.”

Thanks to “Omaggio a Donaggio” she received the Apoxiomeno Award 2016 (together with Helen Mirren, Abel Ferrara, Vittorio Storaro, Robert Hackford), and in the summer of 2017 she received the Troisi Award at the Mare Festival in Salina, presented by Maria Grazia Cucinotta, with the following motivation: “Pianist and composer, elegant and talented, she brings to life works of musical intensity between classical and modern”

 

In the same year she met actor and director Renato Raimo, with whom she conceived and staged the show “Spogliati nel Tempo, ovvero com’è cambiato il modo di dirsi ti amo da Mozart a whatsapp.” The show took part in important festivals throughout Italy and abroad (Monte Carlo, Nice) and today is part of the Green Theatre project conceived by Renato Raimo.

 

In 2017 she collaborated with rapper Dargen D’Amico on the album “Variazioni,” released by GiadaMesi and distributed by Believe. The track “Il ritorno delle stelle,” written for piano and string quartet, also features young rappers Tedua, Izi, and Rkomi. The italian tour of the same name, which featured multi-instrumentalist Diego Maggi and was promoted by the agency Ponderosa Music&Art, was warmly received by a diverse audience, especially very young people, as well as by critics. The two artists took part in numerous music festivals. Noteworthy, the concert with Patti Smith at the Ariston Theatre in Sanremo.

Dargen: “Isabella makes precious music because she transforms darkness into a dream, rejecting banal displays of technique, sculpting a world detached from time, in which technology is not a unit of measure. Serious music but that does not deliver verdicts. And so not all is lost.”

 

Encouraged by the success of the “Variazioni Tour” 2018–2019, she continued with her goal of bringing classical music into closer contact with younger generations. This is why singles “Get Busy (Sean Paul Cover)” and “Dangerous (Busta Rhymes Remix)” were released shortly after.

 

In 2019 she began collaborating as A&R with the reborn Bluebelldisc record label, a historic brand founded by Toni Casetta which, in the 1960s, also released the first three albums by Fabrizio De André.

In collaboration with the label’s managing director, Andrea Natale, she selects new young talents, including the French singer-songwriter Octave Lissner, whose performance of De André’s “Nell'acqua della chiara fontana” was heard and much appreciated by Dori Ghezzi.

In 2020 the new solo piano album “Big Break” was released, published by Bluebelldisc, in a new classical contemporary style.

 

In June of the same year the remix of the track “Sliding Doors,” taken from the album “Big Break,” was released, created by Alex Uhlmann and Luca La Morgia, and the music video by Nico Malaspina and Matteo Lunardi premiered on Billboard Italia.

 

In May 2021 she took part as composer and artist in the theatrical show “Storie di mare e piccole terre,” an ecological fable produced by the Centro Santa Chiara of Trento, with the participation of Dario Vergassola, Maurizio Dini Ciacci, Michele Tadini, Dargen D'Amico, Marquica, and Oscar-winning director Luc Jacquet.

 

On the occasion of the 77th Venice International Film Festival, she was invited as an official guest to the WiCA/Woman in Cinema Award, held on September 8, 2020 at the Hotel Excelsior.

 

During the Premio Rota 2021 she performed her tribute concert “Omaggio a Donaggio” for piano and video projections at the Niccolò Piccinni Theatre in Bari, followed by a performance by composer Claudio Simonetti.

In the same year she presented it in the prestigious setting of the St. Regis Hotel in Rome with the patronage of the Ministry of Culture. Singer-songwriter and producer Tony Renis was also present at the concert and described her as “an artist of great talent.”

 

On November 26 she was invited by Franco Bixio to participate as an artistic guest at the tribute evening to Donaggio at Palazzina Liberty in Milan, organized by Cinevox Record in collaboration with AFI – Associazione Fonografici Italiani.

 

On August 30, 2023 she performed her “Passion Piano Concert,” on the occasion of the inauguration of the Spazio Cinematografo of Ente dello Spettacolo and the Terrazza Cinematografo by Atlas Concorde, at the Hotel Excelsior and during the 80th Venice International Film Festival.

The event was presented by the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo. A special tribute to the music of Venetian Pino Donaggio, but also to other important figures of film music such as Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, and Luis Bacalov.

 

On January 19, 2024 her fourth solo album, “Nocturne”, a concept project published by Bluebelldisc, with artistic production by Ludovico Clemente, was released.

The special guest on the album for the performance of the track “Nightfall” is cellist Tina Guo, while for the track “Reverie” it is guitarist Luca Nobis.

Following the album’s release came the “Nightfall Piano Tour,” which began in March 2024 and included stops in various Italian regions throughout the year.

 

In addition to her new album, on May 1, 2024 the digital release “The Never Ending Now” came out, a spoken word poetry work by Californian poet Adam Schmalholz, known as In-Q, for which Isabella composed, performed, and recorded the musical part. Recorded between Studio City Sound in Los Angeles and CoreTzone Studio in Milan, the album received much attention especially in the USA, where it was praised by several famous podcasters (Lewis Howes, Shawn Stevenson, Aubrey Marcus, Simon Sinek, Simon Hill, Dhru Purohit…) and was submitted to the Recording Academy for consideration for a 2025 Grammy Awards nomination in the category “Best Spoken Word Poetry Album”.

 

On August 1, 2025 she released the double single “Echoes in Blue” and “Spirit of Calypso”, a sound journey inspired by the landscapes and legends of Malta and Gozo, published by Bluebelldisc and distributed by AWAL (part of the Sony Music Entertainment group). The double single represents a musical journey between sea, sky, and earth, in which the music does not describe but suggests: emotional resonance, inner landscape, connection. Two tracks that mark the first stage of a broader project: a musical journey that will culminate in an album and will touch on other islands in the heart of the Mediterranean, in search of their stories, their wounds, and their beauty.

 

On October 10, 2025 the album “The Never Ending Now (Instrumentals)” was released, born from the collaboration with Californian poet IN-Q and now in an instrumental-only version.