Sophia Tomelleri was born in Milan in 1992 and started on piano before switching to saxophone as a child. She earned a classical saxophone diploma from Milan's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in 2013, then moved to Germany for a three-year jazz saxophone degree at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, graduating in 2018. During her years in Bavaria she won a scholarship to spend a year at the CMDL in Paris studying under violinist Didier Lockwood, where she performed alongside drummer John Betsch and organist Emmanuel Bex. She has also studied composition at the Conservatory of Genoa.

In 2020 Tomelleri won first place for young jazz soloists at two Italian competitions in the same year, the Premio Luciano Zorzella and the 24th Premio Internazionale Massimo Urbani (P.I.M.U.), the first time the Massimo Urbani prize's instrumentalist category had gone to a woman. The P.I.M.U. jury, chaired by saxophonist Nico Gori alongside pianist Dino Rubino, cited her "great personality, elegance of sound and style." The win carried the Premio Nuovo IMAIE, which funded an eight-date concert tour over the following year, and set up her recording debut.

That debut, These Things You Left Me (Emme Record Label, 2021), was cut with a working quartet of pianist Simone Daclon, bassist Alex Orciari and drummer Pasquale Fiore, all credited on Discogs alongside Tomelleri on saxophone. She followed it in 2022 with the self-released digital set Sessions, Vol. 1, again with Orciari and Fiore plus guitarist Roberto Pianca, mixing original material with Thelonious Monk's "Ruby, My Dear" and Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring."

In 2023 she began a partnership with Italian pianist Massimo Faraò that moved her catalog onto the Japanese audiophile label Venus Records: Sweet and Lovely (Venus Records, SACD, with a 2026 vinyl reissue) pairs her with the Massimo Faraò Quartet, bassist Nicola Barbon and drummer Alessandro Buzzi on a set of standards, including two Thelonious Monk tunes ("Reflections" and "Ask Me Now") and her own original "I Couldn't Live Without You." A companion digital release the same year, This Is Smooth Sax Jazz (Playaudio), credits her and the Massimo Faraò Trio on eleven standards drawn from the same songbook, including Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" and Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk."

Her most recent album, Besame Mucho In New York (Venus Records, 2025), was recorded on November 12, 2024, at Tedesco Studio in New York with an American rhythm section: pianist John Di Martino, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Willie Jones III. The nine-track session pairs the title standard with originals such as "Just For Fun" and "Storyteller."

Tomelleri has also worked outside jazz as a sideman in Italian popular music, including engagements with singer-songwriter Vinicio Capossela and comedian-musician Elio. Press coverage of her describes her as the granddaughter of veteran Milanese saxophonist and clarinetist Paolo Tomelleri, a connection reported independently by both a 2021 Ponderosa profile and a 2024 La Sicilia feature; the two have not been found to appear together on any Discogs-credited recording, so this remains a biography-only family connection rather than a documented musical collaboration.

Tomelleri has described a preference for a more acoustic style of jazz over conceptual or heavily arranged material, naming tenor saxophonist Mark Turner as an influence and citing John Coltrane's My Favorite Things among her favorite listening. Her working-quartet records on Emme Record Label and her own imprint lean toward that straight-ahead, small-group identity. The Venus Records and Playaudio catalog she has built since 2023 with pianist Massimo Faraò sits inside a different, closely related tradition: Venus is a Japanese label built around mainstream, melody-forward acoustic jazz aimed at an audiophile market, and both Sweet and Lovely and This Is Smooth Sax Jazz work from the American songbook repertoire that defines that catalog. Besame Mucho In New York, cut with veteran New York sidemen Peter Washington and Willie Jones III, puts her in that same commercial mainstream-jazz tradition while recording in the city whose postwar saxophone lineage she has cited as a reference point.