Matti Bye

Matti Bye (born July 25, 1966) is a Swedish Pianist and Composer. Bye has composed music for over 30 films and TV series as well as additional scores for Theatre and Dance pieces. In 2014 Bye was nominated twice at Sweden´s Guldbagge Awards in which his soundtrack for the film Faro won the award. Bye also won a Gudbagge in 2009 for his score for the film Everlasting Moments. Bye has recorded and released numerous solo and collaboration records, include Hydra’s Dream, with Anna Von Hausswolff; Maailma, with cult Finnish songwriter Lau Nau; and has collaborated live with producer and musician Samuli Kosminen.

Bye was brought up by his mother, renowned Swedish actress Birgitta Andersson, while his father was Norwegian playwright . At the age of 20 Stockholm’s celebrated Cinematheque Theatre contacted Bye about performing live to old silent films. “Silent film music was like a blank spot on the music map, but I recognised the freedom I’d have as a musician, and the force of the poetry in these forgotten images. To play piano for these films was like a dream. So I started my own ‘university’ in the cinema, improvising directly in front of the film screen, trying new pieces and styles in front of a live audience. The beauty is that you feel the past through these beautiful films,“ he says of the style that gradually developed in this environment, “but through the music you can add a new layer of something contemporary too.” As his reputation spread, Bye recognised that, thanks to the diversity of his interests, he’d stumbled on a singularly romantic style. “I started out as a piano improviser,” he says, “and suddenly I realised I was composing, and that I’m a composer.”

By the late 1990s, Bye had progressed from silent films to composing for new ones, including documentaries. Since then Bye has composed music to over 30 films not to mention a host of music to theatre and dance pieces. In 2014 he received two of the three nominations for Best Original Music Award at Sweden’s prestigious Guldbaggen – his soundtrack for Faro took the honour (as well as a Nordic Film Music Prize) ahead of his work for The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window And Disappeared. He’s also provided new music for, among others, Victor Sjöström’s seminal horror The Phantom Carriage (1921) and The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924), a landmark melodrama starring Greta Garbo.

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