When Mary Lattimore began playing the harp as a child, she never imagined she might one day use it to create spellbinding music and collaborate with indie stalwarts like Thurston Moore and Kurt Vile. Speaking from her home in Los Angeles ahead of a few months of film-scoring and a tour of Europe, she explains how she came to develop her experimental approach.

Tara Joshi: I read that your mother is a harpist. Is that why you started playing?

Mary Lattimore: I started taking basic piano lessons when I was five. When I was 11, my mom said, “Okay, it’s time for you to try to play harp.” It got more serious as I got older—I was learning to read music and then practicing enough to get to a point where I could actually put emotion in and feel the notes when I was playing them.

TJ: The harp is typically associated with classical, jazz and folk. How did you begin playing in more contemporary and experimental spaces?