After studying at Birkagårdens Folkhögskola she moved to New York to study jazz singing and composition. Christina Gustafsson trained in 1994-96 at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music for, among others, Janet Lawson and Reggie Workman. She graduated in 1996. Gustafsson then studied for a song / improvisation teacher at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1996-98 and also went on to build a musician in 1998-99.
During the years in New York she met the musicians with whom she came to form Christina Gustafsson Quartet, her first jazz quartet. The band played at jazz clubs in Manhattan. Some of the Swedish musicians that Christina Gustafsson met in New York moved back to Sweden and formed Gustafsson's Swedish quintet in 1996.

Also her sister Rigmor Gustafsson is active as jazz singer.