ANNA MARIA CASTELLI is born in Milan, she lives many years in Switzerland and she starts to sing very young. Her artistic career is very intensive, especially abroad, where she sings in several theatres and international festivals, in over than 40 countries.

The Montreux Jazz Festival, where she is invited for two consecutive years, has described her as one of the best Five voices into the world. Her interests about a wide range of musical genres leed her to alternate jazz, tango, singer/songwriter music, drama and musical theatre (where she is considered as one of the best performers in Europe). She collaborates with the jazz musicians Giorgio Gaslini, Gianni Coscia, Renato Sellani, Simone Guiducci, Kyle Gregory, Stefania Tallini, Salvatore Maiore. Interested in contemporary music, she participates to a project concerning electronic music held by some researchers of the Music Department at the Helsinki University. In the meanwhile, she records in Helsinky her first pop music CD, under the direction of Prof. Sipperniemi who writes the music and the lyrics. Edited by the Lithuanian Label MP3, it is released in Italy in 2009.

In 2002, she performs in Vilnius and Kaunas with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by M° Massimo Lambertini, the world premiere of “L’Opéra du Pauvre”. This unpublished work for a solo voice (singing and acting), orchestra and choir is composed by the great French poet, composer and chansonnier Léo Ferré.

In the same year, Anna Maria Castelli wins the prize Premio Musica Europa thanks to “Opéra Tango”, performed with the Uruguayan bandoneonist Hector Ulises Passerella.

In 2005, she tours in Argentina, where she is allowed to sing tango in Buenos Aires and Cordoba (a very unusual fact for foreign singers). After her tour, she and the Award Winner M° Luis Bacalov found the Duo “Tango Myths”, then called “The wonderful adventure of Tango”, obtaining a great success and performing several concerts.  

Anna Maria Castelli is a very talented actress too. She loves to call herself “Cantattrice” (“song-actress”); in July 2004, she is invited at Carnival of Viareggio Cittadella on the occasion of the first edition of Festival “Giorgio Gaber” as the best representative artist for the genre of Musical Theatre. The Festival chooses her as one of the ten performers who most properly represent this very demanding genre, that requires both musical and acting skills. Her recent show, “Se io ho perso…chi ha vinto?” (“If I lost…who won?”), is an homage to the Musical Theatre of Giorgio Gaber; written by Abner Rossi and Mario Berlinguer, it makes its debut in February 2011 at Rossetti Theatre, in Vasto, and it is performed in several Italian theatres, such as the Teatro dei Comici in Rome.

She has recorded six successful CDs; the latest one (“Se io ho perso…chi ha vinto?”), is an extract from the show written by Rossi Abner-Mario Berlinguer. 

She can sing in five languages, as well as in Neapolitan dialect (her family is from Naples); thanks to this gift, she has the opportunity to work with Carlo Faiello (founder of the New Company of Popular Song), taking part to the show “Sud e Passione” (“South and Passion”), in the role that originally interpreted the great actress Lina Sastri.

Anna Maria Castelli is the protagonist in the show written, directed and interpreted by Giorgio Albertazzi “Borges in Tango”, concerning Borges’ poems and Astor Piazzolla music. She is the leading performer in “Sous le ciel de Paris – Homage to Edith Piaf”, with the Virtuosi Italiani; she sings with the great pianist and composer Luis Bacalov in the concerts dedicated to the “Tango Mhyts”; and she performs the original work “Tu non eri che la notte…two years later” with Omero Antoniutti (very talented actor, protagonist of the beautiful movie Padre Padrone, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani). In January 2010 she starts off with two theatrical projects: at Teatro Coccia in Novara, playing Magdalene in “Religioni contro”, and at Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia and Teatro Rossetti in Trieste with a songspiel written by musicologist Gianni Gori, where she performs with the actor Mario Valdemarin.

She works for the Equal Opportunity Commission of the Council of Ministers Presidency, and during her career she has received many acknowledgements and prizes. In 2002 the Prize Musica Europa, in 2003 the Prize Antigone, in 2007 the Prize Portovenere Donna, a prestigious prize that usually goes to important women, such as Margherita Hack, Franca Valeri, Paola Gassman, Rita Levi Montalcini, Dacia Maraini… She is the Artistic Director of the network “Isabella – Network Internazionale Donne in Arte”. In December 2008, she receives the very high honor of Cavaliere dell’Ordine “Al merito della Repubblica Italiana” from the Presidency of Republic for artistic merits. Together with M° Luis Bacalov, in July 2010 she receives the Prize Ignacio Corsini.

Her concert activity abroad is very intensive (she toured in over 40 countries performing several projects about Italian singers/songwriters) and in the last years she is working with a lot of orchestras in the world to realize her project for voice and orchestra dedicated to Edith Piaf. Actually, in 2011 she is invited by the Novosibirsk Chamber Orchestra and in 2012 she tours many Siberian cities with the Virtuosi of Krasnoyarsk.