Mario is still active as a professional, doing studio work and playing as a top-call trumpet player in Northern California. His 2019 album, Pan American Sonata, features longtime friend and seven-time Grammy nominee, Cuban pianist Chuchito Valdés. In his private studio he teaches dedicated students, working professionals and other trumpet teachers. His IMAGE approach (Identity, Mindset, Awareness, Groundwork, Evaluation) rests on one idea: when you truly understand who you are as a player and how the process works, you can teach yourself. His Holistic Buzzing System is designed to get the coordination right between the body and the horn.
MEET YOUR TEACHER
Mario Alberto Silva
Mario has spent more than 20 years on the road and in the studio. He has toured Europe, Japan, India, Indonesia, Latin America and all over the United States as a featured soloist, and has recorded for films, commercials and multiple albums across many genres. All of it comes into the lesson: whatever style you play and whatever you're working toward, he teaches to the player you are and the one you're becoming.
For more than twenty-five years, Mario has been the teacher serious players seek out when they are ready for real change. He earned his Bachelor of Music in jazz performance at San Francisco State University and his Master of Arts in jazz trumpet performance at CSU East Bay, where a performance scholarship put him on the Grammy-winning 2015 Reggae Album of the Year. Since 2017 he has taught at Las Positas College, leading the Big Band for six years and now directing the jazz combos and the applied trumpet studio in jazz and classical styles. He coaches the brass sections at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts and, since 2024, at Heritage High School. Before that he directed instrumental music at Contra Costa School of the Performing Arts, coached the bands at Foothill and Dublin high schools, and stepped in to lead the Latin Ensemble at La Peña Cultural Center. His students have earned full-tuition scholarships to Berklee, played lead trumpet in the Jazz Band of America and landed professional calls behind major artists. Every one of them started with a single lesson.
Teaching
Big Band Director & Professor of Jazz Combos
Las Positas College
Brass coach
Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts and Heritage High School
Former director of instrumental music
Contra Costa School of the Performing Arts
Middle & high school jazz band
Orchestra
Musicianship