PRESS

BIOGRAPHY       WORKS       CONCERTS       CONTACT

▶︎  This Forgotten Land (2017, 2020)

”Matti Bye’s This Forgotten Land rewrote the book on piano instrumentals, surrounding each track in uncanny, otherworldly atmospheres.” — The Arts Desk

“Spooked slow motion circus mannerisms conjure a mad whirligig at the end of time. Ambient traces of Debussy and Satie inform his piano.” — Uncut

“His studio is an analogue world of synths, pianos, celesta, Mellotron and organs, and his music alludes to the strange, romantic mood you get when you hear old merry go rounds, or mechanical instruments in small amusements parks, and abandoned places.” — The Wire

“Matti Bye is a unique artist who can create beautiful music where others would fail. This Forgotten land is a testament to his talent of painting wonderful pictures with music” — Vinyl Chapters

▶︎  Häxan (”Witchcraft Through the Ages”) (2006)

“Matti Bye’s soundtrack for the film ”Häxan” stood out for the way it enhanced the content of the film’s sequences to maximum effect, intimately complementing the theme, atmosphere and various elements in the scenes. The central musical theme, while remaining consistent, ranges between highly evocative free allusions and thematic uniformity in a bewitching flow of wide-ranging sequences, without ever losing expressive tension.”
— The Rimusicazioni Film Festival jury 2016

▶︎  Faro (Original Soundtrack) (2013)

“We felt that the themes developments, the choice of a small orchestral ensemble, and the overall emotional counterpoint provided by the music in a movie, in which, voluntarily, there is very little dialogue, wonderfully fills the blanks that are purposely left by the director in the storytelling.

And this magical, emotional alchemy between the music and the images is, after all, what film music is all about” — The Nordic Film Music Price Harpa’s jury about Matti Bye’s winning music 2014

▶︎  Körkarlen (“The Phantom Carriage”) (2003)

”The film contains two scores, the first a hauntingly effective chamber score by Swedish composer Matti Bye which was written and performed for the first time in 1998 which really captures the solemn mood of the film, providing ample instances of silence to punctuate some of the films darker scenes.” — Criterion

▶︎  Maria Larsons eviga ögonblick (”Everlasting Moments”) (Original Soundtrack) (2008)

”There is a fine balance here between the spoken dialogue and Matti Bye's lovely musical score” — Jamie S. Rich

▶︎  Various quotes

”The musical accompaniment, the Matti Bye ensemble, was spectacular once again. I wish these people would follow me around and accompany my life, or the bulk of films I see. If they play sometime and you have the ability to see them, you owe it to yourself. Their soundscapes are unique, fitting, and enormously flexible to any situation.” — Gunnar Hede

”The Matti Bye Ensemble, from Sweden, returning for a second year, created marvellous moods, or soundscapes, for Mauritz Stiller’s The Blizzard, the evocative British documentary The Great White Silence, tracing the ill-fated Scott Expedition to the South Pole, and Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped.”
— Filmbalaya.com

”The Matti Bye Ensemble, from Sweden, combine melodic music with soundscape experiments. Bye’s music ranges from the quiet, squeaking ice in the band’s accompaniment to The Great White Silence, a British documentary about a doomed 1910 Antarctic expedition, to the deranged, bombastic themes that underscored He Who Gets Slapped, Sjöstrom’s tragic story of a mad clown, starring Lon Chaney.” — Leonard Maltin

”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.” — Myriam Blundell

”Original music for silent film has become an art form in itself, and Matti Bye is a veteran in this field. For eleven years he has played piano to silent films at the film institute. Pretty soon he began to avoid seeing the films in advance but improvised directly from the screen. There he developed a dramaturgical fingertip sensibility. Sometimes he follows the film’s action and mood faithfully, sometimes he strokes the moods against the grain and makes his own commentary’s when he let the rough-riding Ku Klux Klan members in The Birth of a Nation be accompanied by quiet funeral music instead of a hoofed tramp. The music Matti Bye composed for Mauritz Stiller’s masterwork Herr Arnes Penningar has a large dramaturgical intelligence and an independent bearing that enriches and deepens. The music feels as though it were composed in several layers, one for keynotes, one for commentary, a small and witty layer for pure Mickey Mousing, one of a leitmotif character where not a musical motif but a special instrument characterizes a person. The six musicians play thirteen different instruments and their combinations include among other a string trio and a solo for musical saw.” — Calle Pauli, Dagens Nyheter March 12th, 2001

”As film musician Matti Bye has given new life and a new dimension to a nearly forgotten tradition, and he has, by virtue of accompanying several hundred silent films, given the 1990s audience the opportunity to experience some of the magic which was created in the movie theatre when moving pictures were sile.” — Swedish Film Academies Grant 1994

“För sitt kurage att ge sig I kast med olika sceniska uttryck där inget verkar främmande. Radioteater, varité och ackompanjemang till stumfilm är bara några genrer  som Matti ger sig I kast med och som visar på stora ambitioner och mycket energi.” — Stockholm Stads kulturstipendium 2004

PHOTOS:

▶︎ Press photo by Martina Hoogland Ivanow
▶︎ Press photo by Martina Hoogland Ivanow
▶︎ Press photo by Anders Thessing
▶︎ Press photo by Anders Thessing


BIOGRAPHY:

▶︎ Download PDF


VIDEOS:

▶︎ Into The Haze (live at Södra Teatern, Stockholm)
▶︎ Melt (live at Södra Teatern, Stockholm)
▶︎ Melt (Official video)
▶︎ Live at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris (2015)
▶︎ Brought Into Light (Official video)