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Biography    //

​French violinist Alexandra Soumm is one of the most promising artists of her generation. Having performed with most of the major French and international orchestras, she is also a passionate chamber musician. She has released two albums on the Claves label and received both the BBC Young Generation and the London Music Masters Awards. A socially and pedagogically committed artist, Alexandra champions a wide range of repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, and emphasizes cross-disciplinary approaches to the arts, creating numerous projects around poetry, literature, and philosophy. Her latest album, "Paris est une fête", with the Orchestre de chambre Pelléas and conductor Benjamin Lévy, was critically acclaimed and received 5 Diapasons upon its release in 2024.

Among the orchestras Alexandra has collaborated with as a soloist in recent years are the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, NHK, the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, and the Orchestre National de Bordeaux, to name a few.

She is deeply committed to supporting the next generation of musicians, performing with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Animato Foundation Orchestra, the Sphinx Foundation, and has been giving masterclasses in the Americas, Venezuela, Brazil, Belgium, the UK, Japan, Israel, and Kenya for over 10 years. She has worked with renowned conductors such as Neeme Järvi, Herbert Blomstedt, Marin Alsop, Rafaël Frühbeck de Burgos, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Tugan Sokhiev, Marcelo Lehninger, Lionel Bringuier, Benjamin Lévy, Nathalie Stutzmann, Christoph Koncz, Gilbert Varga, Juano Mena, Osmo Vänskä,, Duncan Ward, and Kazuki Yamada.

As a chamber musician, Alexandra Soumm has regularly performed at prestigious venues such as the Auditorium du Louvre (Paris), the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Wigmore Hall (London), the City of London Festival, and Toppan Hall (Tokyo). She has also performed at numerous international festivals, including Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Deauville, Menton, Montpellier, Saint-Denis, Strasbourg, Sceaux, Verbier, and the Sommets Musicaux de

Gstaad. In the UK, she received the London Music Masters Award in 2012 and was also named a,New Generation Artist by BBC Radio 3 from 2010 to 2012, which allowed her to perform with most of the BBC orchestras.

 

Alexandra enjoys collaborating with contemporary composers, including Christoph Ehrenfellner, who dedicated his second violin concerto and a string quartet to her. She also works with Benoît Menut, Kryštof Mařatka, Emile Daems, and Eric Tanguy, who composed a piece for soprano and piano based on the poem Cercle, written by the young soloist.

 

Alexandra Soumm has recorded two albums for Claves: Bruch and Paganini's first concertos in 2008, as well as the complete violin and piano sonatas of Grieg (with David Kadouch) in 2010. In 2023, she released Variations Secrètes with singer Victoria Shereshevskaya and pianist Rémi Geniet. In 2024, Alexandra released two new albums: one with cello and choir (works by Buchenberg and Vasks), and the other, "Paris est une fête", with the Orchestre de chambre Pelléas conducted by Benjamin Lévy, featuring Ravel's Tzigane and Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit.

 

Born in Moscow, Alexandra Soumm grew up in Montpellier and began playing the violin with her father at the age of 5, giving her first concert two years later. She continued her studies in Vienna with the renowned pedagogue Boris Kuschnir and won the Eurovision competition in 2004. She has been deeply involved with the Seiji Ozawa International Academy in Switzerland, in which she has participated for 12 years.

In 2012, she co-founded the association Esperanz'Arts with two friends, which aims to organize concert for isolated audiences, in homeless shelters, prisons, hospitals, and schools for children with disabilities.

Based in Brussels, Alexandra joined the teaching and artistic team of the Musica Mundi School in Belgium in 2018 and taught three years at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW). She is a member of the chamber-music ensemble "Carousel" founded by Annelien van Wauwe. 

Alexandra plays on a Gioffredo Cappa from 1700. 

© Alexandra Soumm | 2017

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