The PANOPTIKON ORCHESTRA 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.

Included in the repertoire are scores for many silent films, including Pabst's The Joyless Street, Christiansen's Häxan, Sjöström's Berg-Ejvind and others, with more films being being scored at the moment. However, the orchestra also specializes in improvising music for silent film performances.

On the image you can see from left to right

Kristian Holmgren - Guitar, Mandolin, Cello, Mellotron, Percussion, Sampler

Lotta Johansson - Violin, Electric Violin, Saw

Matti Bye - Piano, Organ, Accordeon, Glockenspiel, Prepared Tapes

The orchestration might range from an acoustic trio of accordeon, mandolin and violin playing a tango to a menacing ambience coming from a prepared tape and the bell-like sound of pieces of cut-out sheets of metal played with mallets or with a bow. Or maybe an eerie waltz for classical guitar, saw and reverb organ ... every movie has its different needs as regards orchestration and melody - the ability to perform in many different styles is making it easier to score or to follow a new film.

It is the ambition of the PANOPTIKON ORCHESTRA to explore the possibilities of silent film accompaniment, while providing the best possible score for each film, regardless of style.

For the curious at heart, it might be mentioned that the name comes from the Svenska Panoptikon, a waxworks and panorama exhibition on Djurgården in Stockholm around the time of the first movie theaters...

Matti Bye is active as a composer and musician. He has worked on several productions at Dramaten, the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, including those of Ingmar Bergman and Robert Lepage. Since 1989 he has been silent film pianist at the cinemateque in Stockholm and has toured Sweden and overseas as silent film accompanist and theatre musician.

He has composed music for the classic Swedish silent films Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage and Herr Arnes Penningar/Sir Arne's Treasure orchestrated for a mixed group of acoustic and electronic instruments.

His score to The Phantom Carriage has been performed performed by various symphonic orchestras in different European locations, such as Gothenburg, Kiev, Brussels, Luxemburg.

In 1994 Matti Bye received the Swedish Film Academy's Stipendium with the dedication: "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 silent and shown to the accompaniment of live music."