Karl Silveira, B.Mus
About Karl
Toronto-based trombonist, composer, and arranger, Karl Silveira, has been performing for over eleven years, and teaching for more than five years.
Karl has a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Performance from the University of Toronto. He has studied music privately with a variety of professionals including Gordon Sweeney (principle Trombonist of the TSO), Terry Promane, William Carn, Jim Lewis, Kelesley Grant as well as Jamie Reynolds and Tom Richards.
In 2008, Karl was one of three trombonists selected to attend The Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music led by Dave Douglas.
Since graduating, Karl has been working as a freelance musician playing at jazz clubs, weddings, corporate events, creative music showcases, cruise ships and music festivals. He currently performs regularly with The Boxcar Boys, The Lemon Bucket Orkestra, and Drumhand. Karl teaches trombone lessons at Neighbour Note.
Phylosophy Of Teaching
…frequency of practice sessions is more important than length…
Karl advocates a teaching method that focuses on achieving a strong, controlled, pleasing sound. He believes in a step-by-step approach to teaching, one that ensures student success by way of systematic practice sessions that help strengthen one's emboushure.
"Since the trombone requires strong face muscles (or emboushure) to produce a good controlled sound, frequency of practice sessions is more important than length of practice sessions. As the student's ability grows, the teacher will adjust the lessons constantly to challenge the student by presenting fun and challenging new repertoire. The student will also gain insight into interpreting music with feeling and essentially helping the music come alive for the student as well as the listener."
—Karl Silveira
Aside from just playing music from paper, Karl also advocates an element of improvisation in his lessons as well as learning music by ear. This provides an element of depth in the musical study that cannot be reached by just reading music. This will also allow the student to throw himself into musical situations that have no written music and find a way to contribute musically.