Master's prize for Fabio da Silva
The Ober-Gerwern Society has awarded the Ober-Gerwern Master's Prize for outstanding Master's theses at Bern University of the Arts (HKB) for the fifth time. This year's prize of CHF 20,000 goes to Fabio da Silva, a graduate of the Master's in Music Pedagogy.
Born in 1993, da Silva received the award for his written master's thesis, the saxophone teaching aid "Jerry in New York", and the music education project "Into the Future". He discovered with his own pupils that they made significant progress in their general saxophone playing by using new playing techniques on the instrument.
As most saxophone schools do not take this into account, he decided to write his own saxophone teaching material: "Jerry in New York". This introduces modern playing techniques for the saxophone, mainly using his own compositions. It is intended to provide a playful introduction to contemporary playing techniques as a basis for the further development of one's own general saxophone playing.
Fabio da Silva has been playing the saxophone since childhood. At the beginning of the 2010s, he developed a particular interest in new music. Immediately after graduating from high school, da Silva began his saxophone studies at the HKB in Christian Roellinger's class. He completed his bachelor's degree in 2017 and his Master of Arts in Music Pedagogy last year.
