[2] He was awarded the 2012 National Prize in Art "Premio Eugenio Espejo" by the President of Ecuador.
Silva was born in Guayaquil on February 9, 1931, and his father Fermin Silva de La Torre, was a violinist and orchestra director, and the founder of the first Big Band of Ecuador.
[3] At the age of 12 he would accompany his father on gigs to wedding parties where he played violin.
But Silva wasn't motivated by the violin, and made his first instrument out of wood, something resembling a saxophone.
Seeing his interest in the saxophone, his father enrolled him in the Santa Cecilia Academy of the Philanthropic Society of Guayas.