Valentina Cappello is an Italian jazz trumpeter trained at the Conservatorio "G. Verdi" in Milan, where she went on to complete an advanced masterclass in trumpet under Andrea Tofanelli, already profiled on this site. Per her own professional biography, she is a stable member of the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana, the Palermo-based Brass Group ensemble founded in the early 1970s and billed by the Brass Group itself as Italy's first and only permanent jazz orchestra run on public participation. Her name does not currently appear on the orchestra's own published trumpet-section roster, so this particular membership claim is documented from her own site only, not independently confirmed through the orchestra's materials.

She is also manager and trumpeter of the Monique Chao Jazz Orchestra, a Milan-based big band led by composer and pianist Monique Chao. Cappello is Discogs-credited, and listed in the trumpet section of the orchestra's own Bandcamp liner notes, on the ensemble's debut album Time Chamber (Da Vinci Jazz, released September 7, 2024, recorded July 12-13, 2023 at Officine Meccaniche in Milan) - her only individually documented recording credit to date. DownBeat magazine gave the album 4.5 stars and later named it one of its best albums of 2024; Musica Jazz separately nominated the orchestra for "Orchestra of the Year" and Chao for "New Talent" in its own year-end honors. Beyond the orchestra, Cappello leads her own quintet, performing original compositions built on what her biography describes as lyricism, interplay and improvisational identity, though no recording from that project is yet documented on Discogs or any streaming platform.

Since 2023 by her own account (a separate feature on left-handed musicians places the start of the process around a year earlier), Cappello has played trumpet left-handed after a progressive neurological-orthopedic condition in her right arm cost the hand its full functionality over several years. Her teacher Alberto Mandarini first suggested the switch, with further support from Tofanelli, and Yamaha's Hamburg workshop - trumpet makers Eddie Veit and Gianbattista Corti - built her two custom left-handed instruments, with reversed grips and an adapted third-valve slide lever. In 2025 she joined Linksgespielt, an association of left-handed musicians, performing with the group in Vienna on August 13 for International Left-Handers Day.

Cappello's jazz identity runs through large-ensemble, big-band settings rather than small-group leadership: both of her documented affiliations are full jazz orchestras built around a conductor-composer, and her only Discogs-verified recording, the Monique Chao Jazz Orchestra's Time Chamber, sits in the big-band idiom Discogs itself tags the release with - original material for an eighteen-piece ensemble that Musica Jazz, reviewing the orchestra's 2025 live debut at Blue Note Milano, described as drawing on major jazz-orchestral traditions while folding in contemporary harmonic language and cross-cultural influences. Her return to the trumpet after a serious hand injury, now built around a custom left-handed instrument, is itself a distinct part of her current public identity, documented specifically by left-handed-musician advocacy press rather than jazz press.