Jasmine Akahlia Tommaso was born in Rome into a musical family. Her father is the double bassist Giovanni Tommaso, and she began piano at home at around seven or eight and voice lessons at nine, according to a 2017 interview by Fausto Bailo. Her classical voice teacher in Italy, Catia Di Stefano, was the first to introduce her to standards and vocal jazz, and her first concert was at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, in a program marking her father's 50 years in music. She finished school in California as valedictorian of the South Orange County School of the Arts, studied with Donna McElroy at the Umbria Jazz Clinics in Perugia, where a scholarship took her to Berklee College of Music's summer program in Boston, and graduated with honors in Theatre Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz (a 2007 degree, per a 2014 interview). She moved to Los Angeles in 2011, and her official biography lists a spot as a backup vocalist on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 2015 she took a Diploma in Vocal Performance from the Los Angeles College of Music, on the President's Honor Roll, where she studied jazz with Tierney Sutton according to the college's talent page and her own biography.

Her first record, Listening Party (August 20, 2013), is a self-released set of eleven acoustic songs recorded in Los Angeles: covers of songs such as "Born to Be Wild," "American Woman" and "Catch the Wind," in English, Italian and Spanish, plus two originals, "Learning to Be Free" (written with the producer Marvin Etzioni) and "Choosing." Her second, Nelle Mie Corde (May 2015, Alfa Music, AFMCD178), is the jazz album. Giovanni Tommaso produced it, arranged it and played double bass, with pianist Claudio Filippini, drummer Marco Valeri and trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso as special guest on seven of the eleven tracks. Standards ("Without a Song," "Summertime," "On Green Dolphin Street," "In a Mellow Tone") sit next to four of her own songs, Luigi Tenco's "Ho Capito Che Ti Amo," and two Giovanni Tommaso compositions to which she wrote lyrics, "Abbiamo Tutti Un Blues Da Piangere" and "Time to Say Goodbye." The record was named record of the week on the Italian radio program Rai3 Fahrenheit, and the critic Raffaello Carabini reviewed it in February 2016 among Italian jazz women vocalists, praising her in melancholy material, finding her less convincing in scat, and scoring it 7 out of 10.

The father-daughter partnership continued as the Giovanni & Jasmine Tommaso Quintet. Its album As Time Goes By (Parco Della Musica Records, MPR126CD, 2021) adds Andrea Molinari on guitar, Alessandro Rossi on drums and Filippini again on piano, and it was presented at Rome's Casa del Jazz in June 2021. The Italian review site Blogfoolk says it was recorded live at the Auditorium Parco della Musica on December 16 and 17, 2019. Its ten tracks pair standards from the American songbook and a jazz version of Fabrizio De André's "La canzone di Marinella" with originals, including "Son of the Stars" (written with the pianist Lorenzo Grassi), "The Power of Love," "I Won't Go" and "Waltz for Lucca." The quintet played the Umbria Jazz Winter festival in Orvieto in its 28th edition, December 29 to January 2, and then Alexanderplatz in Rome on January 4.

In Los Angeles she has sung in jazz clubs and festivals, including the Watts Towers Jazz Festival, and in Italy at Umbria Jazz, the Lucca Jazz festival and Selinunte Jazz Festival. Her biography says she has performed with Stefano Bollani, Danilo Rea, Tia Fuller and Kim Thompson (both alumnae of Beyoncé's band) and Bosso; of those, only the Bosso session is documented as a Discogs credit. She taught at the Umbria Jazz Clinics in 2015 and 2018 alongside Berklee faculty member Dennis Montgomery III. In 2023 she sang on the San Gabriel Seven's album The Love I Have for You with the pianist Lorenzo Grassi, and released the nine-song Favole on August 17. She is now based in Joshua Tree, California, and performs across the High Desert and Palm Springs area.

Tommaso is a vocalist and lyricist who works in English and Italian. Her jazz records are built on the songbook: Youmans, Gershwin, Kaper and Ellington on Nelle Mie Corde, Hupfeld's title song, "Lullaby of Birdland" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" on As Time Goes By, mixed with her own songs and Italian material by Tenco and De André. Carabini's review singles out her ballad singing over her scat, and Blogfoolk's review of the quintet album describes her voice as framed by the group's melodic lines.

Her catalog is not all jazz. Listening Party (2013) is a set of acoustic covers of rock, pop and jazz songs with two originals, its Bandcamp page tagging it acoustic, blues and jazzy, and Apple Music files Favole (2023) under Rock. Her jazz training is the more formal part of her resume: jazz vocal studies with Tierney Sutton, the Umbria Jazz Clinics, and a long working relationship with her father, a bassist whose own career runs from Chet Baker's 1962 tour to the band Perigeo.