Alexandra Soumm
Violin
Alexandra Soumm is one of the most promising artists of her generation. After performing with most of the major French and international orchestras, she has also established herself as a passionate chamber musician. She has released two albums on the Claves label and has received both the BBC Young Generation Artist Award and the London Music Masters Award.
A socially engaged and pedagogically active artist, she is dedicated to exploring a wide repertoire—from Baroque to contemporary music—as well as world music, including through her duo with vibraphonist Illya Amar. Her latest album, Paris est une fête (2024), recorded with the Orchestre de chambre Pelléas under the direction of Benjamin Lévy, was widely praised by critics and awarded five Diapasons upon release.
Among the orchestras with which she has recently appeared as a soloist are the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and the Orchestre National de Bordeaux, among others.
She is deeply committed to supporting the next generation of musicians, performing with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Animato Foundation Orchestra, and the Sphinx Foundation, and she has given masterclasses for more than ten years across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She has worked with conductors such as Neeme Järvi, Herbert Blomstedt, Marin Alsop, Rafaël Frühbeck de Burgos, Tugan Sokhiev, Nathalie Stutzmann, Marcelo Lehninger, Lionel Bringuier, Benjamin Lévy, Thomas Søndergård, Gilbert Varga, Juanjo Mena, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Osmo Vänskä, and Kazuki Yamada.
As a chamber musician, she has performed regularly at venues such as the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Bozar in Brussels, Wigmore Hall in London, the City of London Festival, and Toppan Hall in Tokyo. She has also appeared at major international festivals including Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Deauville, Menton, Montpellier, Saint-Denis, Strasbourg, Sceaux, Verbier, and Les Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad.
She has received the London Music Masters Prize (2012) and was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist from 2010 to 2012, which led to appearances with most BBC orchestras. She frequently collaborates with contemporary composers, including Christoph Ehrenfellner, who dedicated his Second Violin Concerto and a string quartet to her, as well as Benoît Menut, Krzysztof Maratka, Émile Daems, and Eric Tanguy.
Born in Moscow and raised in Montpellier, she began studying violin with her father at the age of five and made her first public appearance two years later. She continued her studies in Vienna with Boris Kuschnir and won the Eurovision Competition in 2004. She was also closely involved with the Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland for twelve years.
In 2012 she co-founded the association Esperanz’Arts, which organizes concert encounters for socially isolated audiences in shelters, prisons, hospitals, and schools for children with disabilities. Since 2018 she has been part of the pedagogical and artistic team of the Musica Mundi School in Belgium and previously taught for three years at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW).
She is currently based in Belgium and is a permanent member of the Carousel Chamber Ensemble.
