Bio:
As a young musician in Tel Aviv, Yotam Silberstein was quickly recognized as a prodigy and was invited to perform with many of the nation’s top musicians. At 21, he performed at Italy’s renowned Umbria Jazz Festival, released a critically acclaimed debut album and set out on an extensive tour of Europe.
Upon receiving a scholarship to the prestigious New School, Yotam Silberstein moved to New York in 2005. He was a finalist in the Thelonious MonkInternational Jazz Guitar Competition in 2005 with one critic noting: “Yotam’s tones are exquisitely old school but his playing fresh, fiery and bursting with joyful exuberance, and musically he is one heavy cat.” Jazz Times noted that Yotam has “made an impact on the scene with his precision bebop lines and fleet fingered improvisation”. All About Jazz saw a resemblance between his 2009 release, “Next Page” and “the heyday of Blue Note Records”, adding that Yotam is “forging his own path with skills and style.”
As artistically gifted as he is technically proficient, Silberstein is featured on a wide variety of critically acclaimed releases including “Resonance” and “Brasil” on the Jazz Legacy Productions label, John Patitucci‘s new trio album “Irmaos De Fe” and Monty Alexander’s Grammy-nominated “Harlem-Kingston Express Live!” among countless others.
Yotam has earned his place among the jazz elite by collaborating with such luminaries as James Moody, The Heath Brothers, Roy Hargrove, George Coleman, David Sanborn, Marcus Miller, Paquito D’rivera, Christian McBride, John Patitucci, and many others.
This versatile guitarist’s wheelhouse runs the sonic spectrum, including Brazilian, world music, blues and bebop. Silberstein’s showmanship wowed the Kennedy Center’s 2011 production, “Ella!” which featured Dee Dee Bridgewater, Al Jarreau, Dr. Billy Taylor and Janis Siegel. His performance earned him a return invitation for a special appearance at the KC Jazz Club. In Addition Yotam has applied his talent to composing music for film and in 2015 he received the Sundance Time Warner award for film scoring.
Yotam Silberstein has toured as a leader in major clubs and jazz festivals in Europe, Japan, South America, Asia and the US and has received high praise for his performances. Having performed with the world’s premier talent, Yotam has honed his craft with precision, finesse and the innate artistic touch. Both the critics and his fans await the release of his new album “The Village” on Jazz & People in January . DownBeat magazine calls this “his most fully realized recording to date,” and says that Yotam “burns brightly alongside colleagues Goldberg, Rogers and Hutchinson.”
Lessons/Workshops:
Crafting Your Perfect Practice Routine
by Yotam Silberstein
In this new course, learn how to build your practice routine in 5 key areas to maximize your limited practice time, consistently improve your playing, and eliminate lack of motivation and focus.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).