Harpist Mary Lattimore and guitar/synthesizer player Jeff Zeigler premiered their score for the 1968 French film Le R?v?lateur at the renowned Ballroom Marfa’s annual silent film program in 2013. Although created as an intentionally silent work, director Philippe Garrel endorsed showing the film with every subsequent performance of the score. Lattimore and Zeigler’s score powerfully conveys isolation, despair and awakening, amplifying sentiments portrayed in the film. Le r?v?lateur, meaning the processor of images, in the film is the small boy who is given voice through the rhythmic and inventive harp performance and through emotive melodica lines, eerie synth and guitar. Together, the duo creates a soundscape that perfectly matches the film’s progression as it follows the boy’s journey from a family’s dysfunctional home life into a godless post-apocalyptic landscape. Lattimore and Zeigler’s music becomes tense and rigid during scenes of desolation, switching only briefly to a soaring major key during a moment of hope. The two act as musical r?v?lateurs, reflecting the protagonist’s own wordless process. The resulting soundtrack is a journey through fear, joy and solitude, mirroring the boy’s willful act of distancing himself from his parents into autonomy and independence, armed literally and metaphorically against the oppressive and implacable forces of human nature. Since the score’s debut in Marfa, the duo has performed to sold-out audiences at the Getty Museum and Cinefamily in Los Angeles, Constellation Chicago, and at the International House in the duo’s hometown of Philadelphia. Le R?v?lateur was recorded by Zeigler (War on Drugs, Kurt Vile) at his studio, Uniform Recording. Zeigler also performs synth and guitar works solo as Valley Exit. Lattimore, a classically trained harpist, has appeared on stage or on recordings with Steve Gunn, Meg Baird, Kurt Vile, Thurston Moore, and Wrekmeister Harmonies, among others. She received a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 2014. The duo’s first record together, Slant of Light, was released in 2014.
