The Hollywood Theatre marks its 100th year with Sonic Silents, a four-night festival pairing classic silent films with live original scores starting Thursday, Sept. 17.

Portland composer Mark Orton curated the lineup, which runs through Sunday, Sept. 20, at the nonprofit theater at 4122 NE Sandy Blvd. Each night, musicians who wrote brand-new scores for silent-era films will perform them live as the movies screen.

The roster spans jazz, chamber music and indie rock, drawing players including Los Lobos saxophonist Steve Berlin, Decemberists members Jenny Conlee and Nate Query, DownBeat critics poll winner Jenny Scheinman and Grammy- and Tony-winning bassist Todd Sickafoose, as Hoodline reported.

The lineup is stacked.

Orton co-founded the acoustic chamber group Tin Hat and has scored Oscar-nominated films including Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" and "The Holdovers," as OPB has profiled. He discussed the Sonic Silents project in a KATU interview on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

Opening night features "Snatched From Dark Powers," pairing Paul Wegener's 1920 German Expressionist film "The Golem" with a new score by Berlin, Scott Amendola, Adam Dorn and Max Knouse.

The program also includes experimental shorts by Hans Richter.

Friday's program, "Surreal Paris & The Insectarium," features newly scored early silent shorts by filmmakers including Ladislas Starewicz, an early animator famous for using preserved insects as puppets, along with works by Georges Méliès, Alice Guy and Luis Buñuel. Conlee, Rachel Blumberg, Jon Neufeld and Courtney Von Drehle perform.

The weekend builds to a centennial showcase of Buster Keaton's "The General" in a newly restored transfer from Kino Lorber, with an expanded score by Orton performed alongside string players from Portland's 45th Parallel Universe. Short film openers are scored by Scheinman and Sickafoose.

The centennial connection runs two ways. The Hollywood Theatre opened in 1926 as a 1,500-seat silent movie palace, giving the surrounding Hollywood District its name. That same year, Keaton filmed "The General" in Cottage Grove, south of Portland. According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Keaton's location manager found a locomotive in logging camps east of Cottage Grove after plans to shoot in Georgia fell through. The production's most famous stunt sent a real locomotive crashing off a bridge into the Row River. The wreckage reportedly remained a local tourist attraction until World War II.

The Hollywood Theatre has been operated since 1997 by the nonprofit Film Forever Northwest. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, according to ArtistDirect. The theater held separate 100th birthday festivities in July.

Executive director Doug Whyte, speaking at a Multnomah County proclamation event on Aug. 26, called Portland's theater scene unusual. "Almost every neighborhood has its own independent theatre, which is very, very unusual," he said. "If you go to other cities, that is not the case."

For ticket information, visit hollywoodtheatre.org.