We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eviatar Slivnik. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eviatar below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Eviatar with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
My passion for becoming a professional jazz musician began in fifth grade when I joined my school’s jazz department after a couple of years of drum lessons. There, I started my formal training, playing in a band, and learning the repertoire, idioms, and the tradition of jazz. After a few years in the jazz department, I already knew who Coltrane, Miles, Rollins, and Blakey were, and could sing along with their recordings or play them on the piano. That enabled me to apply to Thelma Yellin High School of Arts, where I fully committed to music as a career.
Potentially the most important aspect of my development was the social part. At school, I met other kids like me who were deeply in love with this music and were determined to become professional jazz musicians. I remember how seeing and hearing all the other kids play so well made me come back home and practice, deepening my knowledge. Almost daily, we would get together and show each other new albums that we had recently discovered and hyped each other on the music. We also played for hours, song after song, until it was late at night and our parents asked us to stop. That was a key part of my growth—the mutual passion for music and the desire to become a great player.
Around sophomore year in high school, I faced my first serious failure. My friends and I applied to the Berklee College of Music summer program, to which only the most talented young jazz musicians from all over the world would get accepted, to learn from great teachers, perform, and have the chance to be awarded a scholarship for degree studies there. I thought I had a good chance of being accepted. However, not only was I not accepted, but almost all of my friends were. I was devastated. At that moment, I lost all confidence in my playing and my ability to clearly evaluate my skill level.
After a while, what started as shame, sadness, and anger began changing to emotions of motivation, determination, and self-belief. Imagining all my friends having the time of their lives that summer made me want to spend the summer practicing tirelessly, hoping they would come back from Boston not believing how much I had improved. I pledged that summer to practice EVERY day for at least 2 hours. And so I did. Until then, my practice time was scattered and not very serious; I would practice some days and not others. By the end of that summer, I had already formed the habit of practicing those 2 hours every day and started to see the results, so I didn’t intend to stop. That habit has stayed with me to this day.
Over the years, I’ve kept growing my work ethic with other complementary sources such as flexibility within structure, an understanding of how the brain focuses, and loving the feeling of improvement rather than fearing failure.
The state of mind I was in when I began developing my work ethic after that failure was enough to get me started, but not enough to keep me going. To sustain it and improve on it, I had to find positive and joyful feelings as my drive. By the time I attended college (at Berklee College of Music, with a full scholarship), I had started witnessing that talent alone could only take you so far, but without practice, you’d never surpass that point. When I think about my progress, both in the artistic sense as a musician and in the business/career aspect of music, I believe in consistency and long-term progress. I truly think that if I keep getting a little bit better every day, in the long term, I’ll be able to achieve my professional goals. I don’t think that practicing for 6 hours one day and then not practicing for a week will give you the same results as practicing for 2 hours, or however much you can afford, but every day consistently.
From that belief comes my work ethic and my drive to wake up every morning, go to my studio, and practice the drums.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Being a professional jazz musician can mean different things, depending on who you ask. In my case, I’m both a jazz drummer who works as a sideman with various groups and musicians worldwide, and a bandleader who books my own bands and shows at different venues around the city. These terms—sideman and bandleader—can be vague and subjective. In jazz, you’re either the one getting the gig (the concert), constantly communicating with musical directors, bookers, and club owners, or you’re hired by other musicians who already have shows lined up, and you come in to play their music or program. It’s almost like two different professions, but I try to navigate between both.
Unlike most other music genres, jazz allows each individual a lot of influence over the music, even if you’re ‘just the drummer.’ We don’t usually have parts written out, and often, there’s no rehearsal beforehand—or we’re meeting for the first time on stage. This means each player has to bring their own interpretation, creativity, and spontaneity, whether it’s coming up with parts or soloing and interacting with each other in the moment.
These days, I’m juggling being a sideman on the NYC jazz scene, which means playing with different artists every night, and booking my own gigs where I hire the musicians I want to work with. As a bandleader, I spend a lot of time writing messages, emails, preparing new material, writing sheet music, and coordinating rehearsals and payments. As a sideman, I make sure to practice daily to keep improving my skills, learn the music the bandleaders send me, show up on time for gigs, be reliable, and dress appropriately for the occasion.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Listening I – to other musicians while playing. It’s crucial to be fully present and attentive to what everyone is playing, and to blend with their ideas as musically as possible. It’s not just about listening to myself when I’m playing, but focusing on how the overall music sounds, as if I were an audience member. This helps create a cohesive and engaging performance.
Listening II – to the masters of the art form. Learning their style, copying their phrases and sound, and familiarizing myself with the tunes they played or composed (the repertoire). Jazz is a language, and everything we play or improvise on stage follows certain aesthetic rules. There are jazz references, quotes, jokes, as well as jazz grammar and vocabulary. It’s not just about free improvisation or ‘playing whatever you feel,’ but more like two poets creating a poem on the spot—based on proper grammar, vocabulary, and ideally, paraphrasing or referencing the great poets who came before them.
Listening III – to my positive self-talk, not the negative or pessimistic voices. Our minds don’t always align with our wishes and hopes. Often, we have to actively drown out the self-doubt that isn’t constructive and only distracts us from our goals. Instead of letting those negative voices dominate, we need to focus on the ones that build our self-confidence. That confidence is essential to keep moving forward, and it feeds the self-belief that’s crucial for success, in my opinion.
What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?
One of the most impactful things my parents did was advise me early on not to take gigs that I didn’t feel excited about musically, even if the money was tempting. Although we didn’t have plenty, they always encouraged me to focus on the things I truly enjoyed and could grow from musically. I remember when I was about 17, I was offered a gig I really didn’t want to play. I consulted my mother, and she said, “It’s better to spend that time practicing than playing a gig you don’t want to play.”
Later on, I found a deeper meaning in that advice. It wasn’t just about saving my time and energy for things I enjoyed, but also about protecting myself from accumulating too many negative experiences related to playing music. Doing so could lead to detachment or even frustration with music in the long run. It was about keeping the joy and passion for the craft alive.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.eviatarslivnik.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eviatarslivnik/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eviatar.slivnik
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@eviatarslivnikmusic
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5bsXTqFoTwEE2cNBMwkOtJ?si=6SCBrz4xTNeCi5Bu8x6KIw
Image Credits
Yossi Zwecker
Yoel Levy
Yoav Triffman
Dominique Rimbault
Monte-Carlo SBM by philipducap 2019
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