Aida-Carmen Soanea, first prize winner of the Valentino Bucchi Competition in Rome in 2005, has established herself as a charismatic and versatile violist of her generation in both solo and chamber music. She won second prize at the Yuri Bashmet Competition (Moscow 2000) and was a scholarship holder of the German Foundation for Musical Life, the German Academic Exchange Service and the German National Academic Foundation. As a soloist, Aida-Carmen Soanea has performed at many festivals such as the Lucerne International Easter Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Sanssouci Music Festival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Music Festival and has been accompanied by ensembles such as the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. As a duo partner, she performed alongside Tabea Zimmermann at the Cité de la Musique Paris, with Renaud Capuçon in Lucerne at the Easter Festival, with Tanja Becker-Bender at the Berlin Philharmonie or with Tasmin Little in various halls in Great Britain. 

In sonata recitals, Aida-Carmen Soanea regularly performs with pianists such as Lorenzo Cossi or José Gallego and played several times at the Berliner Festspielwochen alongside Natalia Gutman, Kolja Blacher and Rainer Kussmaul. It has become a well-known festival all over the world. Europe, including the Gloger Festspillene and the Elverum Festspillene in Norway, the Festival de St. Riquier and the Festival Celles-sur-Belle in France, the Oxford Chamber Music Festival and Music at Plush in England, Amadéo Festival and Oleg Kagan Music Firmly in Germany. She performed together with the Henschel Quartet, the Vertavo Quartet, Alexander Melnikov, Jean Quilhem Queyras, Adrian Brendel, etc.

Aida-Carmen Soanea was a founding member of the delian::quartet in 2007, with whom she sustained performances at many major festivals. After a short time in the Amar Quartet in Switzerland , she has become the violist of the Minguet Quartet (www.minguet.de). Appearances at the Salzburg Festival (2020, 2021, 2023, 2024), at the Schleswig Holstein Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, at the Ludwigsburg Festival, but also repeated invitations to the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Flagey Hall in Brussels confirm the the great success of the ensemble, which was founded in 1988 and is now one of the most known string quartets internationally. The Minguet Quartet concentrates on classical-romantic literature as well as modern music in equal measure and is involved in numerous world premieres of compositions of the 21st century. In 2024 and 2025 the ensemble will focus on the milestone birthdays of Anton Bruckner, Josef Suk, Toshio Hosokawa, Maurice Ravel, Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono and Arnold Schönberg.

After many years of research work, Aida-Carmen Soanea has produced the first solo CD by Aida-Carmen Soanea with works by the Berlin Schoenberg student Norbert von Hannenheim (1898-1945), who died in an asylum for the mentally ill shortly after the end of the war. These pieces, which were long considered lost, represent a great enrichment of the viola repertoire of the Second Viennese School. Some of the works have already been published in 2017 by Boosey&Hawkes and more are in the pipeline. In connection with this project, Aida- Carmen Soanea has completed her doctoral thesis on the oeuvre for viola and piano by Norbert von Hannenheim in June 2023 with "Summa cum laude" at the Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca.

Aida-Carmen Soanea feels very strongly connected to contemporary music in general and besides her regular participation in the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt and her current work in the Minguet Quartet or editing new solo works for viola at the Berlin publishing house Neue Musik, she encourages the creation or performance of new works for her instrument. She has works by Jakob Gruchmann-Bernau, Gabriel Iranyi, Carmen Cârneci, Adrian Pop, Edith Canat de Chizy, Jordi Cervello. Her first CD with contemporary works for viola and electronics was released in 2020 by DME with works by Moritz Eggert, Jaime Reis, Roman Vlad, Joāo Madureira, Christopher Bochmann .

Since October 2019, Aida-Carmen Soanea has been teaching at the Gustav Mahler Private University in Klagenfurt.

Born into a Romanian family of singers from Iasi, Romania, Aida-Carmen Soanea quickly developed into a mature musician. Before she and her family moved to Germany in 1987 she took lessons with Mugur Popovici at the Special Music School in Bucharest. She later became a junior student at the Lübeck Academy of Music in the class of Barbara Westphal.

From 1995 to 1999 she studied at the "Hanns Eisler" Music Academy in Berlin with Kim Kashkashian and found new inspiration in Paris when she completed her soloist studies at the CNSM in Paris with Gérard Caussé. Curious and open to new opinions, she took part in masterclasses with other violists such as Wolfram Christ, Thomas Riebl and especially Juri Bashmet. But one of the greatest musical influences was Claudio Abbado. She met him regularly as principal violist in the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, later also as a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and as a substitute with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and thus developed her knowledge and enthusiasm for orchestral playing, which she still uses today as a guest principal violist with various orchestras (Konzerthaus Berlin, Capitole Toulouse, Liceu Barcelona, Maggio Musicale Firenze, Munich Chamber Orchestra).

Aida-Carmen Soanea gives summer masterclasses in Italy, France and Austria. In addition to music, Aida- Carmen Soanea is particularly interested in languages. The violist speaks German, English, French, Italian and Spanish in addition to her mother tongue.