Valentina Fortunati earned her diploma in guitar from the “P. Mascagni” Parity Music Institute in Livorno in 2002, graduating with top honors under the guidance of Maestro Flavio Cucchi. She received her degree in Cinema, Music, and Theater from the University of Pisa in 2006 with a thesis on the compositional poetics of Leo Brouwer and Cuban music. She has published a thesis on the music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco in Fronimo, a national magazine dedicated to classical guitar.

She has pursued advanced masterclasses with renowned teachers such as Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz, Roland Dyens, Luc Vander Borght, Victor Villadangos, and Hopkinson Smith.

Her musical career includes numerous concerts both as a soloist and in chamber ensembles, notably with the 24 Corde Ensemble guitar quartet (album “Besides”, 2010), and with the Italian singer-songwriter trio Sonambula (with Letizia Pieri and Sigi Beare), winner of the Ciampi City of Livorno Award in November 2017.
Her interest in blending various musical genres, as well as compositional and improvisational language, materialized in 2013 with the Tatogamono trio (“Tatogamono”, 2014) alongside musicians Matteo Scarpettini and Sigi Beare.

Since 2020, she has been part of Stefano Dentone’s Sundance Family Band as a mandolinist and banjo player, with whom she has recorded two albums (“Sunday Ranch” 2022, “Growing up blues” 2024, GoCountryRecords).

Since 2018, she has been a Music in Movement practitioner following the method developed by E.Jacques-Dalcroze, with a diploma issued by the Italian AIJD Association (Rome). She is a guitar teacher at the “G. Micali” state middle school with a musical focus in Livorno.