MATTI BYE ENSEMBLE
The MATTI BYE ENSEMBLE is an orchestra that plays music for silent movie performances, both precomposed scores and improvised music, on traditional instruments as well as modern—using prerecorded tapes, sound effects, rare instruments (like the saw or the mellotron)—to be able to create both melody and atmosphere to match the shifting moods of the screen performance.
The ensemble's music—described by film critic Leonard Maltin as suiting the film "to a T"—has captivated audiences around the world, at cinemas, film festivals, cinematheques, museums, universities, film archives—from San Francisco and New York, and Paris to Dublin, Sodankylä and Tromsö.
They have performed at events as diverse as the Silent Film Festival in San Francisco, the Bergman Festival on Fårö, in the Baltic Ocean, at the Cinemarctic FF at Svalbard in the middle of the Polar Sea, at the Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, and at the To Save and Project festival at the MoMa in New York City.
Equally at home with the classics of the Swedish Golden Age of Cinema—such as The Phantom Carriage, Terje Vigen, Häxan, and Saga of Gösta Berling—and the classics of the international silent cinema—notably and recently Pandora's Box, Greed, Metropolis, and Nosferatu—the MATTI BYE ENSEMBLE will stop at nothing to explore the endless possibilities of silent film accompaniment.
Matti Bye is widely considered as one of Sweden's most important composers of film scores and an extraordinary performer with his own, incomparable style of improvisation on the piano. He is also widely recognized for having written a series of innovative scores for such early Swedish silent film classics as Phantom Carriage by Victor Sjöström, Häxan by Benjamin Christensen, and Gösta Berling Saga by Mauritz Stiller, now included on a 6 DVD box set released by Svensk Filmindustri, SF, as well as countless other silent films. Last year he wrote the score for Academy Award nominee Jan Troell's latest feature Everlasting Moments and Stig Björkmans "Scenes from a playhouse" – a documentary about Ingmar Bergman.
Matti Bye's work is also concerned with the tension, which exists between moving image, sound and music. He has recently engaged with collaborative projects involving an esthetic and performative language proper to the contemporary visual arts. Beyond the medium, his work takes the viewer on a unique and lyrical journey of the world of dreams and illusions through a multi-sensorial experience of storytelling.
PREVIOUS CONCERTS
"Earth", "Herr Arnes pengar" and "L’Inferno" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; May 1-5, 2019
"Herr Arnes Pengar" at the Kalbjärga Film Festival, Gotland, Sweden; July 3, 2018
"Gösta Berlings Saga" and "Silent Avant Garde Films" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; June 1-2, 2018
"Gösta Berlins Saga" at the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; February 8, 2018
"Terje Vigen" at San Francisco Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, USA; June 4, 2017
"Battleship Potemkin" at San Francisco Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, USA; June 3, 2017
"Erotikon" at the Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria; February 27, 2017
"Terje Vigen" at the Göteborgs Film Festival, Göteborg, Sweden; February 5, 2017
"Häxan" at the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; January 10, 2017
"Woman of Tokyo" and "Terje Vigen" at the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; November 22, 2016
"Nanook of the North" and "The Strongest" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; June 2-5, 2016
"Ingeborg Holm" at the Göteborgs Film Festival, Göteborg, Sweden; February 6, 2016
"Nanook of the North" at Capitol, Göteborg, Sweden; November 17, 2015
"Norrtullsligan" and "Flesh and the Devil" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; June, 2015
"The Outlaw And His Wife" and "The Joyless Street" at the Midnight Sun Film Festival, Sodankylä, Finland, June 11-15, 2014
"The Extraordinary Adventures Of Mr. West In The Land Of The Bolsheviks", "The Girl In Tails", "The Navigator" and the masterclass "Variations on a Theme" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; May 29-June 1, 2014
"The Outlaw And His Wife" at the Bergman Week, Sudersands Biograf, Fårö, Sweden; June 26, 2013
"The Outlaw And His Wife" at the Cinema Ritrovato festival, Piazzo Maggiore, Bologna, Italy; July 4, 2013
"The Clown" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; July 18-21, 2013
"The Joyless Street" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; July 18-21, 2013
"The Outlaw And His Wife" at the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco, California; July 18-21, 2013
"Pandora's Box" at the Silent Film Days, Tromsø, Norway; September, 2013
"The Outlaw And His Wife" at the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; October 18, 2013
"Häxan (Witchcraft Through The Ages)" at the Time Zone Festival, Bari, Italy; November, 2013