Mara Galassi graduated with honors from the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan and the Pesaro Conservatory of Music. She studied pedal harp with Luciana Chierici, David Watkins, and Emmy Huerlimann, performance practice with harpsichordist David Collyer and lutenist Patrick O’Brien and musicology with Michael Morrow in London. She served as principal harpist for the Teatro Massimo Opera House in Palermo, Italy.
She currently lives in Milan where she teaches historical harps at the Accademia Internazionale della Musica and the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan and at the Esmuc in Barcelona. She performs as soloist and as a member of many famous early music ensembles in Europe: Concerto Vocale (René Jacobs), Concerto Italiano (Rinaldo Alessandrini), Mala Punica (Pedro Memelsdorff), Concerto Soave (Jean Marc Aymes). As a musicologist she has done extensive research in the field of historical harps.
Mara Galassi has recorded for Tactus, Symphonia, Ricordi, Harmonia Mundi, Opus 111; Arcana.   For Glossa, she recorded Il viaggio di Lucrezia, a solo album of Italian baroque music for harp, Les Harpes du Ciel with Gabriella Bosio, harp duets from the second half of the 18th century for two single-action pedal harps, The Microcosm Concerto, music by Georg Friedrich Händel for Welsh triple harp, Erard harp and keyboard instruments, and the Concerto alla Harpa e Flauto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for Harmonia Mundi France, with the Freiburger Baroqueorchester. With the actress and dancer Deda Cristina Colonna she played in the art film “Voluptas Dolendi I gesti del Caravaggio” (ArtFilm, Fondazione Marco Fodella, 2010).