Laura Agnusdei is a saxophonist and electronic musician from Bologna, Italy. Her solo project explores the possibilities of electroacoustic composition, creating soundscapes within which the sax remains the main narrative voice. Suspended between the use of melody and timbral research, remnants of song form and improvisational glimpses, her music amalgamates different sound sources. In 2021, she created the site-specific project Ubi consistam, focused on the sonic exploration of Bologna with graphic storytelling by Giulia Polenta. She has a long-standing project with sound designer Daniele Fabris, with whom she composed Riflessi. In 2023 she published Goro, a work inspired by the graphic novel Quasi nessuno ha riso ad alta voce by Pastoraccia. She plays the saxophone in the band accompanying the Italian edition of Lazarus, David Bowie’s testamentary rock opera, staged in 2023. She is also involved in live soundtracks of film materials, in dialogue with realities such as Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and Home Movies – Archivio nazionale del cinema di famiglia.

www.lauragnusdei.com

Frank Bockius studied at the conservatory in Trossingen, Germany. He works as a drums and percussion teacher and as a freelance musician. For many years he toured with the jazz quintet Whisper Hot and the percussion band Timpanicks. He also played medieval, flamenco and Latin music, and worked with dance companies and for theatres. Twenty-five years ago he started to accompany silent films and since then he has worked intensively for national and international venues and festivals, including Kyoto, Sodankylä, Pordenone, San Francisco, Bologna, London, Paris and Zurich. In recent years he has also collaborated with many other great silent film musicians.

www.frankbockius.de

Neil Brand has been a silent film accompanist for 40 years throughout the UK and at film festivals around the world. He now has a very fruitful relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra with his acclaimed orchestral scores for Hitchcock’s silent Blackmail, Asquith’s Underground, Chaplin’s Easy Street and Fairbanks’s Robin Hood, as well as his recent concert drama of The Hound of the Baskervilles for BBC4 starring Mark Gatiss. He is a TV presenter with five Sound of… seasons on BBC4, is a regular presenter on Radio’s Add to Playlist and Soul Music, a Fellow of Aberystwyth University and a Member and Visiting Professor of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2016 he was awarded the BASCA Gold Badge.

www.neilbrand.com

Timothy Brock specialises as a conductor in concert works of the early 20th century and live performances of silent film. As a score preservationist, his work includes the restoration of Shostakovich’s New Babylon, Erik Satie’s Entr’acte, Saint-Saëns’s The Assassination of Duke DeGuise, and Wolfgang Zeller’s Vampyr. Since 1999, he has been working with the Charles Chaplin family and made 15 critical editions of his scores including Modern Times and City Lights. As a composer he has written more than 40 scores for silent films, including Buster Keaton’s The General, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Moon. Timothy Brock has conducted some of the most prestigious orchestras in the world, including the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, BBC Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France. In June 2023 he made his debut with the Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the live world premiere of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator at the historic Terme di Caracalla.

www.timothybrock.com

Matti Bye has been the permanent silent film pianist at the Svenska Filminstitutet since 1989. He has 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, as well as countless other silent films. He has developed a personal and contemporary accompaniment style for early film, with a dramaturgical sensitivity that led him to create music for modern cinema and give film concerts worldwide at various film festivals. Other projects include being the pianist on Ingmar Bergman’s silent film The Last Grasp and composing the soundtracks for Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments and Marcel! directed by Jasmine Trinca.

www.mattibye.com

Simone Cavina is a drummer and percussionist. He soon developed a passion for jazz and improvisation, in constant dialogue with an exquisitely rock matrix. In 1999 he participated in the performance of the soundtrack of Maciste all’inferno (music by Marco Dalpane) restored by the Cineteca di Bologna. He is the co-founder of Junkfood, an instrumental band with three albums to their credit, with whom he composed an original soundtrack on commission for the film Dementia by John Parker. Since 2017 he has been the drummer of Comaneci, a psychedelic folkpop trio. Since 2018 he has collaborated steadily with Quintorigo, with whom he recorded a tribute album to Charles Mingus and played at prestigious Italian jazz festivals. Between 2018 and 2019 he played in Arto, an instrumental post-rock math band. He collaborates with various artists including: Mariposa, Egle Sommacal, Wu Ming and Manuel Agnelli.

Cleaning Women is a Finnish experimental band consisting of Risto Puurunen, Timo Kinnunen, and Tero Vänttinen, who go by the stage names CW01, CW03, and CW04. In addition to the originality of their sound, “a combination of cinematic sci-fi western and sparkling trash-can disco”, they are known for using alternative, self-made and customised instruments made from damaged household objects or material salvaged from rubbish. Over more than 25 years, the group has performed nearly 600 concerts in over 20 countries. They have released four albums and have composed and performed several live soundtracks for silent films. Additionally, the band has created original music for two short films by Alice Rohrwacher, Le pupille, which was nominated for an Oscar, and De Djess.

Antonio Coppola began to study the piano at a very early age. In 1965 he enrolled in the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, and followed courses in piano performance, composition and orchestral conducting until 1977. In 1975 the Rome Cineclub L’officina invited him to perform as piano accompanist for a series of silent film retrospectives. Since then, he has dedicated himself exclusively to creating soundtracks for silent cinema. He has been the guest of film festivals and retrospectives around the world, both as a musician and as a member of juries. He has also been engaged by a number of film archives and universities as a research consultant on the restoration of original soundtracks. He has also taught at workshops and given papers at conferences on techniques of improvisation and the composition of soundtracks for silent cinema.

André Desponds is a pianist, composer, arranger and lecturer in improvisation at the Zurich University of the Arts. He has been working as a composer for theatre, ballet, advertising and radio, and he has accompanied silent films since 1978. He worked on silent film soundtracks for Swiss television and DVD editions, including those composed for the Cinémathèque suisse and Cineteca di Bologna. Together with dancer Andrea Herdeg and a group of actors, he collaborated on the project Herdeg&desponds, which blends dance, theatre and virtuoso piano-playing into poetic and dramatic performances. He also founded the Gershwin Piano Quartet, a formation with four pianists performing their own arrangements of classics from numerous musical traditions on four grand pianos.

Daniele Furlati, pianist and composer, has a degree in composition, piano and arrangement. He earned two diplomas with honours in courses in advanced music for film, taught by Ennio Morricone and Sergio Miceli at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. He has composed music for television commercials, short films and documentaries. His work on features includes creating the score for the film Viva San Isidro by Alessandro Cappelletti. He co-wrote, with Marco Biscarini, the music for the feature films by Giorgio Diritti Il vento fa il suo giro, L’uomo che verrà, Un giorno devi andare and Volevo nascondermi. He works with Cineteca di Bologna, playing piano accompaniment for silent films. He adapted and orchestrated the original music by Teo Usuelli for Riprese di Mario Fantin per Italia K2. He teaches Composition for Music Applied to Images at the Conservatory of Rovigo. The Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Modena ensemble participates for the first time, under the direction of Maestro Daniele Furlati, with the performance of the new score for the film My Cousin: Isotta Violanti, Michaela Bilikova, Veronica Medina, Erica Alberti, Antonio Salvati, Salvatore Lamantia, Pierluca Cilli and tenor Vincenzo Tremante.

Stephen Horne, based at London’s BFI Southbank, has recorded music for DVD releases, TV screenings and online presentations of silent films. Although principally a pianist, he often incorporates flute, accordion and percussion into his performances, sometimes simultaneously. He regularly performs internationally, and his accompaniments have met with acclaim at film festivals in Pordenone, Telluride, San Francisco, Cannes, Hong Kong and Berlin. Last year he was commissioned to write orchestral scores for The Manxman and MoMA’s restoration of Stella Dallas.

www.stephenhorne.co.uk

Pietu Korhonen is a film sound designer based in Helsinki. He has worked on more than 200 films worldwide. He has created sound designs for films such as Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki and Compartment No. 6 by Juho Kuosmanen.

Heikki Kossi is a Finnish foley artist and sound designer, who has worked on more than 400 international film productions since 2001. His projects have won an Academy Award (Sound of Metal, Best Sound 2022), a César for Best Animation Film (The Little Prince), Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Film (Last Men in Aleppo, The Cave, A House Made of Splinters) and the Special Jury Award for Sound at Sundance 2024 for Gaucho Gaucho.

Valentina Magaletti is a drummer-composer and multi-instrumentalist known for her innovative approach to drums and percussion. Her technique incorporates everything from vibrations and marimba to microphones and found objects. She has performed with artists such as Jandek, Pat Thomas, Deb Googe, Malcolm Mooney, Thurston Moore, Steve Beresford, Steve Shelley, Lafawndah, MicaLevi, Sampha, and Nicolas Jaar. As a composer, she has collaborated with Tom Relleen, Al Wootton, Pino Montecalvo, and João Pais Filipe. Vanishing Twin is perhaps her most accessible project, exploring the spaces between jazz and psychedelia.

Silvia Mandolini was born in Montreal in 1970. After graduating as a violinist at the Conservatory of her hometown, she continued her studies firstly at McGill University and then at the G. Verdi  Conservatory in Milan, from which she graduated in 1996. She performed with important chamber music ensembles, prestigious Italian orchestras (Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai in Turin and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, among others) and at several festivals as Milano Musica, Angelica, Verona Contemporanea, Montreal’s Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and at the Venice Biennale. She has played live for different radio stations, including CBC, Radio-Canada and RAI. Mandolini co-founded the Zipangu Ensemble, formed by 13 string musicians from Teatro Comunale in Bologna. She played the violin for the soundtrack of Pane e Tulipani and Le Acrobate. Since 2008, she is a resident violinist of Teatro Comunale in Bologna.

Meg Morley, Australian-born London-based pianist, composer and improviser, creates music within diverse artistic genres (silent film, contemporary dance and ballet, solo piano, contemporary jazz ensembles and electronic music). Classically trained from the age of two, she has worked extensively with various dance companies (English National Ballet, Rambert Company, Matthew Bourne, Pina Bausch) and performs and composes for international silent film festivals and institutions (BFI, Flatpack Festival, Nederlands Silent Film Festival).

Maud Nelissen is a Dutch composer and pianist who has particularly dedicated herself to the creation of musical accompaniment for silent films. She worked in Italy with Charlie Chaplin’s last music arranger Eric James. Since then she has been performing at festivals and special events in Europe, America and Asia. She founded her own ensemble, The Sprockets, and performs with them or with various other ensembles and orchestras in Holland and abroad. Among her most notable orchestral scores is that for Erich von Stroheim’s 1925 classic The Merry Widow, interpolating themes from the Franz Lehár operetta, and King Vidor’s The Patsy with Marion Davies.

www.maudnelissen.com

OoopopoiooO was founded in 2012 by Vincenzo Vasi and Valeria Sturba. The duo has toured extensively around Italy, Europe and the Americas. In 2015, their self-titled first album was released under Tremoloa Records and in March 2019, Elettromagnetismo e Libertà was released. In addition to the theremin, an instrument on which they are both considered virtuosos, their sonic bouquet includes everything: violin, electric bass, keyboards, mini-synths, toys, pieces of cardboard, percussion, snare drums, and, last but not least, vocals. The instruments, distributed in two almost mirrored sets, the extensive use of loop stations and electronic music bring the acoustic mass of this unusual duo to the levels of a small orchestra, bringing together their parallel worlds.

www.ooopopoiooo.com

Laurent Petitgand is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer and actor. With his musical group Dick Tracy, he composed his first film music for Wim Wenders in 1985 for the film Tokyo-Ga, which marked the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with the German director: Wings of Desire, Faraway, So Close, Beyond the Clouds, The Salt of the Earth among others. He wrote lyrics for Alain Bashung (Les grands voyageurs) and, chord arrangements for Christophe (Comm’si la terre penchait). He wrote the music for Paul Auster’s The Inner Life of Martin Frost.

Stefano Pilia is a guitar player and electro-acoustic composer, founder member with Valerio Tricoli and Claudio Rocchetti of the 3/4HadBeenEliminated group. He is also part of the psychedelic rock band In Zaire, of the BGP trio with David Grubbs and Andrea Belfi, of Il Sogno del Marinaio with Mike Watt and Paolo Mongardi, guitar player for the Malian star Rokia Traoré and the Italian rock band Afterhours.

Antonio Raia is a composer, improviser and saxophonist. Since 2013 he has played concerts and been involved in art installations with more than 500 live performances throughout Europe in festivals, contemporary art museums and clubs. In May 2024 he curated the sound action Facing Béla Tarr with sax and waterphone for Béla Tarr and his short film Prologue. In 2023 his book La memoria bucata. Apparente soliloquio con Antonio Neiwiller, dedicated to the playwright, was released. Since 2020 he has been working as a composer of film soundtracks including Artemide Alfieri & Angelo Cretella’s La carovana bianca, Marco Pasquini’s La guerra che verrà, and Lievito by cyop&kaf. In 202,2 in collaboration with other Italian musicians, he partly curated the music for Enrico Ghezzi and Alessandro Gagliardo’s film: The Last Days of Humanity.

Eduardo Raon, Portuguese composer and musician, is the author of numerous projects for cinema, animation, theatre, dance and the arts. In particular, he composed the music for several silent films, including Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm – The Symphony of Donbass. He has also performed world premieres of solo and chamber pieces by Eurico Carrapatoso, Clotilde Rosa, Ivan Moody, João Lucas, Joana Sá, Daniel Schvetz, Eli Camargo, Sebastian Duh and Fernando Lobo.

www.eduardoraon.com

Donald Sosin is composer, keyboardist, arranger, and conductor. He has performed at Il Cinema Ritrovato each year since 1999, often joined by his wife, singer Joanna Seaton. They also appear at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the National Gallery and other film festivals including Telluride, Jecheon (South Korea), Seattle, San Francisco, Moscow, and university campuses. The couple leads silent film music workshops around the US. In 2017 Sosin received the Career Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival. Recent scores include three Jewish-themed silents co-composed with klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals.

www.oldmoviemusic.com

John Sweeney has played for silent film since 1990, starting at Riverside Studios in London and subsequently playing at many venues in Britain including the National Film Theatre, the Barbican Cinema, Broadway in Nottingham, the Imperial War Museum, and Watershed in Bristol. He has played for the British Silent Cinema Festival since its inception and has since 2000 been a regular pianist at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. He is a regular performer at the Slapstick Festival of silent comedy in Bristol. He has performed at numerous festivals in different countries such as China, Germany, Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia and Turkey. He has recorded DVDs for the BFI, Cineteca di Bologna and Edition Filmmuseum as well as a soundtrack for broadcast on Sky TV. In 2018 he composed and performed a score for the London Film Festival Archive Gala, which he subsequently performed at MoMA in New York. He is one of the founders of the Kennington Bioscope, hosting regular screenings of neglected silent films at The Cinema Museum with live music.

Ykspihlajan Kino-orkesteri consists of singers (and siblings) Anna, Oona and Laura Airola, guitarists Miika Snåre and Tuomas Asanti, trumpetist Miia Reko, bassist Reetta Kuisma and drummer Ilkka Tolonen. The group specialises in performing live music for silent films. The orchestra is inspired by 1960s Italian music and old Finnish dance music. They have performed extensively at international film festivals from Palm Springs in California to Paris Cinémathèque and from St. Petersburg to Cannes.