Artist Description

Elisa Toffoli was born in Trieste, Italy, on 19th December 1977. When Elisa was 16 years old a demo tape of hers was heard by Caterina Caselli, owner of the label "Sugar Music". She immediately recognised Elisa's talent and arranged for her to go to the USA to improve her English, and to record her first album, "Pipes & Flowers". Released on Caselli's label in 1997, the album was produced by Corrado Rustici (Whitney Houston, Zucchero and more). Critics and the public were struck by this small, shy girl who closed her eyes while singing, and still was able to set herself free through her voice and her music.

The debut was later released in other European countries. In Italy, it received many awards such as the prestigious Tenco Award given by critics to the best records of the year and the PIM, the Italian Music Award. Italian pop star Eros Ramazzotti offered Elisa the opportunity to open his gigs across Europe and she accepted. In 2000 and 2001 Elisa released two albums, "Asile's World" and "Then Comes the Sun". The first was a giant step away from her debut, with experimental, electronic arrangements and collaborations with many different producers, yet the second reprint contained one of her biggest hits to date, and her first song to be sung in Italian, "Luce (tramonti a Nord Est)". (International listeners may well have heard the song before with its original English lyrics entitled "Come Speak to Me".) The second album marked a return to more traditional arrangements and a new collaboration with Rustici. An international version simply titled "Elisa", containing a collection of songs from her three first albums, were released in more than twenty countries. Her fourth album "Lotus" was released in 2003, followed by an ambitious tour in Italian theaters.

In 2005 Elisa went to L.A. to record her fifth album, this time produced by Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette, Anastacia, Christina Aguilera and more). The result was "Pearl Days", ten energetic tracks featuring musicians as drummer Matt Chamberlain (Tori Amos, Macy Gray) and guitarists Tim Pierce (Phil Collins, Rod Steward) and Michael Landau (Seal, Miles Davis). In addition to this already impressive career, Elisa has sung at the Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Salt Lake City, USA, dueted with Luciano Pavarotti at Pavarotti & Friends, played the lead part in Giovanni Sollima's opera "Ellis Island", and recorded a duet with Tina Turner entitled "Teach Me Again", written by Elisa for the film "All the Invisible Children" - a collaboration featuring work by directors such as Spike Lee and John Woo. In late 2006 the album "Soundtrack '96-'06" was released.