Donà, Cristina

Born in Rho, Italy on 23 September 1967, Cristina Donà developed a passion for music as a teenager. She studied at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where, during a student protest in 1990, she met Manuel Agnelli, leader of the Italian indie rock band Afterhours. Later she started her own singing career opening Afterhours’ concerts in their ‘During Christine’s Sleep’ tour.

Besides live performances in clubs in Milano and surroundings, Donà, encouraged by Manuel Agnelli, began working on her own songs, and released her first album, ‘Tregua’, in 1997. The album was an immediate success. In the meanwhile Donà performed live on an Italian tour, and opened concerts for Ben Harper and David Byrne.

In 1999 she started working on the second album, ‘Nido’. Robert Wyatt contributed to this album with the arrangements in the song ‘Goccia’ and with the participation in a videoclip, shot on the East Coast of England, and released on the Goccia EP. In 2001 Donà was invited to the Meltdown Festival, where she performed the same night as Anja Garbarek and Mark Eitzel. Davey Ray Moor, attending the concert that night, was very much impressed by Donà’s performance, and this was the starting point of a long-lasting collaboration between the two artists.

The third album, ‘Dove sei tu’, was released in 2003, and Davey Ray Moor performed as a special guest in some concerts during the promotional tour. Donà recorded a cover of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, which was included in the single ‘Invisibile’. She also worked, together with Davey Ray Moor, on the translation of the lyrics of ‘Dove sei tu’. Her self-titled album was released in 2004.

At the end of 2004 she started an extensive tour of Europe, performing in Germany, France, UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, and with a special performance at the Polar Spectacle Festival in Norway. The American musician Ken Stringfellow played with her in most of the European concerts.

In 2006 she signed to the major label EMI that is re-distributing her entire catalogue. She released the new albums ‘Torno A Casa A Piedi’ (2011) and ‘Così Vicini’ (2014).