Riccardo Emilio Soana was born on July 16, 1943, in Rivarolo Mantovano, in the province of Mantua. On the suggestion of Gorni Kramer, another native of Rivarolo, he enrolled at the Parma Conservatory and graduated in 1961, after taking the experimental ensemble-music courses taught there by Claudio Abbado. He went on to become first trumpet of the RAI Orchestra in Milan, a post in which he worked under prestigious conductors, and was also first trumpet of the Montecarlo Night Orchestra led by Nick the Nightfly. He spent the rest of his career in Milan's jazz and studio world as a lead trumpeter, section anchor and occasional soloist; Discogs lists him as a member of 13 ensemble entities, among them the Gaslini, Cuppini, Azzolini, Cichellero and Gianni Basso big bands, the Grande Orchestra Nazionale di Jazz, the Jazz Class Orchestra, the Faraggiana Big Band and the Monte Carlo Nights Orchestra.

His earliest documented jazz recordings come from 1968, when he was in his mid-twenties. That year he sits in the trumpet section of Giorgio Gaslini's big band on Grido (Durium) and on the live political-song record Il Fiume Furore, alongside Dino Piana on valve trombone and, on Grido, Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone. The same summer he is in the trumpet section of Gil Cuppini's big band on Sof 'Stroke, recorded live at Marina di Carrara with Duško Gojković as featured trumpeter, and in 1971 he plays on the Giorgio Azzolini Big Band's Dire album with pianist Franco D'Andrea. His 1974 credit on Romano Mussolini's soul-jazz date Mirage puts him in a small group as the only horn besides altoist Glauco Masetti, with Romano Mussolini on Fender Rhodes. Through the 1970s and 1980s the same Milan circle brought him onto records with Attilio Donadio (Gigi Cichellero Big Band, 1974), Dino Betti van der Noot (A Midwinter Night's Dream, 1983, with Bruno De Filippi and Gianluigi Trovesi) and Gil Cuppini again (1984).

From the mid-1980s his name recurs on the recordings of the Jazz Class band (later the Jazz Class Orchestra), a Lombardy big band; he is on its J.Class 86 (1986) with Antonio Faraò at the piano. Sound and Colours (1991) added Franco Ambrosetti and D'Andrea as co-billed soloists, and Porgy and Bess, recorded in Milan on July 23, 1994 and issued by Philology in 1999, brought in Phil Woods as special guest on alto saxophone. Between those sessions Discogs documents him as the lead trumpet of Alain Guyonnet's big band on Swiss Kiss, recorded in Geneva in June 1990 with Lee Konitz and Dado Moroni, and on Alfredo Golino's First Flight (1988) with Faraò and Ambrosetti. He also worked with Gabriele Comeglio's Jazz Company big band (its Flying High, 1991, has Comeglio on soprano saxophone and Ada Rovatti on tenor) and was first trumpet of the Civica Jazz Band, the Milan ensemble on The Symphonic Ellington (1999, with Enrico Intra as music director), the Mina tribute Omaggio a Mina (2003, where Soana solos on "Tintarella di Luna") and Omaggio a Sun Ra (2013). Italian Wikipedia also names the jazz orchestra of Milan's Civica Scuola di Musica, directed by Intra, among his ensembles.

The catalog also shows him as a soloist on the more ambitious Italian orchestral projects of the late 1990s and 2000s. He plays trumpet on Gianluigi Trovesi's Around Small Fairy Tales (Soul Note, 1998), is trumpet soloist on Gaslini's Cantos (Soul Note, 2000, tracks 5 and 6, recorded live at Milan's Teatro Lirico in 1999) and on Bruno Tommaso's La Sequenza degli Armonici (2000, recorded live in Nembro), and sits in the trumpet section of the Grande Orchestra Nazionale di Jazz's Live (Soul Note, 2000, recorded in 1992), directed by Gaslini, next to Flavio Boltro, Alberto Mandarini and Claudio Corvini. In 2000 he was also in the trumpet section of the Gianni Basso Big Band's Bebop, arranged by Slide Hampton, alongside Fabrizio Bosso; his last documented recordings include Dario Faiella and the Monday Orchestra's Recurring Dreams (2015, with Emanuele Cisi), Max De Aloe with the Faraggiana Big Band (2022) and Comeglio's The Journey (Dodicilune, 2025), whose credited guests include Randy Brecker, Franco Ambrosetti and Bob Mintzer.

Alongside the big-band work, Soana was one of Milan's most-called session trumpeters. Discogs credits him on 22 Mina releases between 1991 and 2023, and on records by Franco Battiato, Iva Zanicchi, Amii Stewart, Pierangelo Bertoli, Malika Ayane and others. That pop-session output accounts for roughly half of his 126 Discogs credits; the other half is jazz. He also led his own small group. The Emilio Soana Quintet's Dizzy Forever (Live in Iseo Jazz 2015), released on Map Golden Jazz in 2017, is a live program of Dizzy Gillespie's repertoire ("Bebop," "Ow!," "Grovin' High," "Manteca," "Birks' Works"), and the quintet's listing at MITO SettembreMusica names saxophonist Gabriele Comeglio, pianist Mario Rusca, bassist Marco Vaggi and drummer Tony Arco. Promotional material from 2007 for an earlier Emilio Soana Quartet cites work beside soloists including Cisi, Ambrosetti, Bosso, Mintzer and Brecker.

Soana was also a teacher. He taught trumpet in the jazz courses of Milan's Civica Scuola di Musica "Claudio Abbado" (jazz courses running since 1987), where a published Triennio-level "Tromba Jazz" program carries his name as instructor, and he co-wrote with Marco Mariani the progressive method La tromba jazz, published by Ricordi as a book with CD. He also played with the SMUM Big Band, the big band of the Swiss Scuola di Musica Moderna, including its 25th-anniversary concert with Franco Ambrosetti and Rick Margitza and the recording 25 Silver Session with Bob Mintzer and Ambrosetti. Biographies published by the Civica Scuola, Italian Wikipedia and others say he played at the Montreux Jazz Festival and at festivals in Detroit and Reno, Nevada, with Duško Gojković, and that he worked with Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, John Lewis, Francy Boland, Harry Edison, Kenny Barron, Curtis Fuller, Ray Brown, Kai Winding and Clark Terry; no recording credit found ties him to any of these American musicians, so those names are reported as biographical claims and are not treated as verified collaborations. The Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Kenny Barron, Curtis Fuller, Ray Brown and Clark Terry profiles are on this site for context.

He received the "Gorni Kramer" prize of the Fondazione Sanguanini Rivarolo Onlus in 2005 and again in 2023, the second time on his 80th birthday. Soana kept performing almost to the end: he played a concert two days before his death, and died on the night of January 14, 2025, at the Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan, of a sudden illness, aged 81. His funeral was held on January 18 in the parish church of Rivarolo.

Soana's documented identity is that of a lead trumpeter and section player first and a soloist second. Discogs credits him as lead trumpet on Swiss Kiss and lists him in the trumpet sections of the big bands and orchestras described above, from Gaslini's 1968 ensemble to Comeglio's 2025 album. His solo features are concentrated on orchestral commissions (Gaslini's Cantos, Tommaso's La Sequenza degli Armonici) and on individual big-band tracks (he is credited as trumpet soloist on the first and third tracks of Max De Aloe's Three Views of a Secret, 2022). The repertoire on his records runs through the main lines of mainstream big-band and postwar jazz: Ellington (The Symphonic Ellington), Gershwin (Porgy and Bess with the Jazz Class Orchestra and Phil Woods), bebop (the Gianni Basso Big Band's Bebop, and his own quintet's Gillespie program on Dizzy Forever), and the free and avant-garde end of the Milan scene through Gaslini's Il Fiume Furore (which Discogs tags Free Jazz / Political / Field Recording) and the Civica Jazz Band's Omaggio a Sun Ra. His teaching material, the La tromba jazz method with Marco Mariani, is described by its publisher as a progressive method for developing jazz language and appropriate technique.