Daniela Panetta was born in Milan on October 22, 1968. She is an Italian jazz vocalist, composer, lyricist and vocalese performer, active in concert since the early 1990s across formations ranging from voice-and-reed duos to big bands, and in jazz vocal pedagogy for just as long. Her Discogs artist entry (a single, unambiguous identity, independently cross-confirmed by Wikidata) describes her simply as an "Italian vocalist"; her own biography and press describe a much broader, dual career as a working jazz singer/composer and as a vocal teacher.

In 1992 she met saxophonist and composer Sandro Cerino, who began giving her his own compositions to record — the start of a long-running partnership that would eventually become the duo Ampio Respiro. The following year, 1993, she was chosen by Giorgio Gaslini for Le Pause del Silenzio, an Italian vocal quintet the pianist directed; the group is credited (per Italian Wikipedia) with winning the 1998 Premio Cetra. That specific claim rests on Wikipedia alone: Le Pause del Silenzio's only Discogs-documented release, Freedom Jazz Dance (1992, Soul Note, directed and featured on piano by Gaslini), was recorded in the spring of 1992 — before Panetta's stated 1993 arrival — and its five credited singers on that record are Gabriella Rolandi, Laura Conti, Lucia Minetti, Michela Martelli and Paola Lorenzi, not Panetta. A separate, later connection to Gaslini is independently confirmed at the Discogs credit level, however: Panetta sang on his 1997 jazz opera Mister O, credited as "Performer [Cast Of Characters], Vocals [Young People Of 'New Village']."

In 1994 she joined vocalist Paola Luffarelli in the modern-jazz quintet Vocaland, with a rhythm section of guitarist Stefano Bassi, bassist Roberto Piccolo and drummer Toni Arco. Vocaland built an active festival and competition record (an award at Prato's "Summertime Jazz," a win at Arcore Jazz, and the "Viva il Jazz" prize broadcast on RAI 1 in 1999) and, in 1998, recorded the album En Voyage for Caligola. Two of its tracks credit Panetta and Luffarelli as co-composers alongside outside writers, one of them Carla Bley — independently confirmed via Discogs' own composer credit on "Dedicato a Ida Lupino." A second co-write, "Le Voyage," is often described in Panetta's own secondary biography as involving the French accordionist Richard Galliano; Discogs' composer credit for that track instead names an entity cataloged as "Roberto Galliano" (alias Earl Zinger), and this profile could not independently confirm the two Gallianos are the same person — see daniela-panetta_notes.md.

Alongside Vocaland, Panetta and Sandro Cerino formalized their own project as the duo Ampio Respiro in 1998, recording Melodia Incantata (2005, Splasc(h) Records) and the duo's self-titled Ampio Respiro (2007, Q disc), the two records that carry the fullest Discogs credit for her own writing, arranging and production work: composer/lyricist and producer credits alongside Cerino's saxophone, flutes and bass clarinet. All About Jazz reviewed the pairing directly, describing her voice working with Cerino's reed and flute textures across settings that include a Pablo Neruda text. In 2007 the duo also released Schegge, a UNICEF-benefit project with lyrics by Ivano Malcotti.

In 2000 Paolo Conte called her to record as a vocalist on his album and international-tour project Razmataz, and she returned as a singer on his 2003 album Reveries; Discogs tags both releases Jazz alongside Pop and Chanson/Vocal styles, reflecting Conte's own genre-crossing idiom rather than a straightforward jazz record. That same year, 2000, the label WEA selected her as vocal coach for Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis during the Italian promotion of Californication, a one-off outside her jazz work.

Teaching has run alongside performing for Panetta's entire career: she has held jazz and modern-singing teaching posts in Lombardy schools since 1992, and her own faculty biography names Roberta Gambarini, Sheila Jordan, Michele Hendricks, Bob Stoloff and Jay Clayton among the artists she studied jazz language and vocal technique with — real, named mentorship and workshop relationships, not Discogs-documented recording credits. In 2005 she was invited by Art Simposia of New York to teach an intermediate jazz-voice class and to assist Michele Hendricks' own summer improvisation masterclass in Spoleto, where she also performed with Ampio Respiro at the Spoleto Estate festival; in 2008 she shared the bill at Spoleto's "Faculty" concert alongside pianist Harold Danko, saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, Hendricks again, guitarist Guido Di Leone and others. She holds an advanced vocology qualification from the University of Bologna and, in 2016, co-authored I segreti della voce – Canto jazz e canto lirico a confronto ("The secrets of the voice: jazz singing and lyric singing compared") with Giuseppina Cortesi (Aracne Editrice); a second book, Sete di voce (Bookness), followed in 2021.

Panetta's identity sits squarely in vocalese and jazz-vocal composition: writing original lyrics and vocal lines over jazz material (the Vocaland co-writes, her own "Melodia Incantata" pieces with Cerino), reinterpreting standards (Coltrane's "Naima," Bud Powell's "Un Poco Loco" on En Voyage), and, in the Wesuvio Swing quartet and the Vesuview Jazz trio, applying a jazz lens to Neapolitan song repertoire. Her two published books, both built around comparing jazz singing to classical/operatic ("lyric") vocal technique, reflect a career that treats jazz vocal pedagogy as seriously as jazz performance itself — a dual identity distinct from most sidemen or bandleaders profiled on this site.