During the years of 1988 – ’90 Silvia won wide acclaim hosting the “ZDF Jazzclub” television series, presenting and interviewing renowned jazz artists from all over the world, and of course also performing as an artist in her own right.

In the 1990s, this vocal talent further developed her skills, touring all 5 continents and playing at virtually every major European festival, performing and recording with jazz greats from all over the world, such as:
Archie Shepp / Michel Herr (USA/B) – for the movie soundtrack “Just Friends”
Jean ‘Toots’ Thielemans (B); Gustavo Bergalli (Arg.)
Bart van Lier, Ferdinand Povel, John Engels, Hein van de Geyn, Lex Jasper, Jack van Poll, Cees Slinger (NL)
Riccardo Del Frá , Hervé Sellin, Eric Barret (F); Heinz von Hermann (A)
Hazy Osterwald, Paul Kuhn, Peter Herbolzheimer, Michael Sagmeister, Kölner Saxophon Mafia (Ger)
Jeff Hamilton; John Hicks, Curtis Lundy, Idris Muhammad; Dizzy Gillespie; Stacy Rowles; Johnny Griffin (USA), just to name a few…

One of Silvia’s major assets is her great versatility. She feels comfortable singing and entertaining in front of a big band or just sharing an intimate duet with a guitarist. Whether she is performing in a Brazilian jazz project or the compositions of Cedar Walton, Duke Ellington or Kurt Weill, she always gives total commitment. This also applies to the original music of some favorite musicians, to which she sometimes contributes her own lyrics. The proof of this can be heard on over 30 albums that she has recorded.
In the past few years she has been focusing again on the classical setting of ‘singer plus piano trio’, touring in Germany mostly with the Cologne-based Martin-Sasse-Trio, in Holland with the Cees-Slinger-Four, in Italy with the Giovanni-Mazzarino-Quartet…

Yet another facet of Silvia’s abilities is her educational skill. She has given workshops and clinics all over Europe, taught vocal jazz at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen (Ger, 1993 – 2001) and at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp (B, 1995 –’97). Since 1996 she has been teaching at the Dortmund Jazz Academy and, since September 2004, at the Conservatory in Enschede, The Netherlands.

From 2002 until 2005 she worked as an artistic adviser for the Konzerthaus Dortmund - Philharmonie für Westfalen (Ger).Silvia was responsible for the jazz programming and also regularly presented her own series Silvia Droste & Special Guests, to which she invited prominent artists and ‘young lions of jazz’ to share the stage with her.

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