The Emotional Truth in Science: Sirintip Speaks

Design by Nitcha Tothong

by Sarah Thomas

Vocalist and composer Sirintip brings together her backgrounds in pop, classical, and traditional Thai music in her latest project, Mycelium. Following her 2022 album Carbon, she continues to explore both environmental and humanitarian themes in this new interdisciplinary work. We chatted with Sirintip last week about her research on the plankton and fungal networks, what it’s like working on an interdisciplinary project, and what we can learn from microorganisms as a society.

The Jazz Gallery: You’re premiering your project, Mycelium, at The Jazz Gallery on June 26. This project has been a long time coming! Can you start by telling me what it’s about?

Sirintip: The project is an interdisciplinary suite that I've written for nine musicians, visual projections, and a dancer. We're performing it for the very first time on June 26 at The Jazz Gallery.

To give a little bit more context, in 2022 I released an album called Carbon, which is based on the causes and effects of climate change. For that record, I did all the research myself. I would sit in my music studio every day, pick a different topic surrounding climate change, read about it, and then figure out ways of turning that into music. I learned a lot from working on that album, and it got me down this path of considering how I can turn different concepts into music without necessarily putting them into lyrics. So for that record, I explored taking data about the rising global temperature from NASA's website and translating that into pitches. I also took plastic trash from my kitchen, sampled it, and used it as a percussion set to bring in the topic of plastic pollution. That process was the gateway into my work on Mycelium. 

After Carbon came out, and based on all the things I learned from it, I was thinking to myself how cool it would be if I got to work with scientists first-hand. Doing all the research myself for Carbon, there were a lot of scientific resources I just didn't have access to as an artist. For many of the resources I could find, I didn't know if they were accurate or not. And then there were resources that I just couldn't understand because I'm not a scientist. 

So after putting into the universe that I hoped I could work with scientists, one day I literally got an Instagram ad about an artistic residency out at sea in the North Pacific where I could spend two weeks working with plankton scientists. I applied and I got that residency. 

TJG: Wow! So what was it like being immersed in a research expedition full time?

S:I was the only artist with twenty-five scientists in the North Pacific for two weeks, and my job on the research vessel was to write music based on the research. I was able to work with the scientists directly, being able to ask questions and see their process. They would throw nets into the ocean at different so-called “stations,” which are just coordinates in the ocean, not knowing what would come up. Then, they would see what came up and process that.

I think a lot of us as artists tend to focus on how things are going to turn out—what the end product will be versus just the process of showing up and throwing in the nets every day. That process was all that mattered. Working with them, seeing how they work, being able to talk with them, and getting exposure to the unseen world in the ocean was so inspiring to me. 

We also had a lot of conversations about how the science world is similar to the arts world in that they also need to apply for funding in order to do their research. Certain things are understudied because they're underfunded. There are a lot of reasons they may be underfunded, but it comes down to not only the interests of the scientists, but the interests of society as a whole. 

For example, there are more studies around whales, which are big and magnificent creatures, than on tiny plankton that you can't see with your eyes. But plankton is the base of the food web in the ocean and they produce more than 50% of the earth's oxygen. If they disappear, or if they're out of balance, it will screw up a lot of things even for us on land.

So that research trip was the catalyst for this project. After the trip, I applied for a lot of funding to support the project, and I have been very lucky to receive that funding. In 2023, I went to the Oregon coast and brought my two main collaborators with me—Nitcha Tothong, who is a visual designer, and Danny Jonokuchi, who is a trumpeter and composer. I wanted them to be able to work with the scientists directly as well. It was important to me that this project would not just come through the lens of my perspective and what I think is interesting, but to have multiple perspectives.

TJG: So you started with plankton then dove into fungi. How do you think about the fungal and plankton networks relating to each other? 

S: Well, after working with plankton, which is a microorganism, I was then curious to explore other types of microorganisms and to draw the connection between them. I was also exposed to the Fantastic Fungi documentary and read a lot of books about fungi, and I just love the idea of the mycelium network. 

This project isn’t just an environmental project about plankton and fungi, though. It's also a humanitarian project. I feel like the mycelium network itself is such a great visual representation of how everything is interconnected. That is the core of what I wanted the suite to be about. 

In addition to fungi and plankton, I met up with a few scientists who work with microbes, but they're even more abstract than plankton and it was difficult to turn that into music and art. The idea was to explore all types of microorganisms and really try to see what kind of parallels they can draw to our society. Because interconnectedness is unseen. We can't see how what we do every day impacts other people and our planet. Especially when it comes to the climate crisis and a lot of the other social issues we have, it’s easy to feel hopeless because we're just one person. But it's really so much more than that. If microscopic fungi can produce over 50% of earth’s oxygen, what are we humans capable of if we came together? 

When I learned more about fungi, I found that there were so many things I think a lot of humans can connect with. There's so much we can learn from both plankton and fungi, and I'm sure there's even more we can learn from microbes and bacteria and all that stuff. But that was too much to cram into this stage of the project.  

TJG: In what ways did you end up reflecting these ideas artistically?

S: I mentioned my album Carbon, but to go back a little bit further, as a high schooler in 2010 I was asked to write a song for a fundraiser for Haiti after they had the earthquake. That was the first time I wrote a song about social change. I wrote the lyrics and they were very much on the nose: “Save Haiti.” After the show, a woman came up to me and said, “I've been watching the news, and every time I watch it I've just been turning it off because it's too much for me. But when I heard your song, I really felt inspired to engage and to do something.” 

As cliche as it sounds, that was the first moment I started to see the power of music. After that, I continued to write songs on different topics that I cared about. For me, it’s never really been about writing another love song. It's always been about things that I see in our society and in our world. But then I would run into issues of audience members coming up to me after shows and saying, “Why do you need to tell me what to do? Why do you need to preach? Can't it just be music?” 

So that made me really rethink how I could be more creative and let both things coexist. How can I write about something that I care about, but also allow music to just be music? That's how Carbon came about, because I had a moment where I thought, what if I don't put it in the lyrics? What if, instead of singing about the earth getting warmer, I took that data and put it into my music?

But on that record, I felt like it was a little bit too process-oriented—maybe the messaging was too masked. So while working with the scientists, I asked them, “How can I be a vessel for science communication? How can art help with this? How can we create art that balances informative value and artistic value?” 

The answer that came up was that art can either be illustrative or it can be illuminating. What they meant is, for example, you can paint a mushroom exactly how it looks or you can try to tell the emotional truth of the mushroom. So this project is more about the emotional truth. That's why it's been so great working with the scientists firsthand, because I would not have been able to find the emotional truth of these microorganisms just by watching documentaries, reading books, or finding other resources on my own.

TJG: Could you talk a little more about your two main collaborators, Danny and Nitcha, and how those relationships came about?

S: Nitcha is Thai, and I'm half Thai and half Swedish. We met in New York about seven years ago and we've been working together ever since. She has done all the artwork for my albums, and for my previous album she also did visual projections. I love her work as a designer, but I also love the way she thinks about art. 

I think it's almost more common in the visual art world for people to really think about the narrative of the art, versus so many musicians who tend to write the song then decide what it's called. So I really love that about her, and how she thinks so critically about different social issues and how she could translate them into her art. 

Also, both she and I are immigrants, so there's so much about trying to tell that story. This project is about the unseen things, and the feeling of being an immigrant is very connected to that theme. So it was important for me to get her perspective and see what she would be inspired to create based on what she learned about the natural world. I also wanted to see if there was anything within the natural world that would show her new things, because I learned so much about the world and about myself through plankton.

As for Danny, I started working with him in 2020. I was asked to produce a big band album, and that was happening while I was also organizing what was the first jazz festival of the quarantine era according to the Rolling Stone magazine. It was called Live from Our Living Rooms, and we raised $140,000 to support musicians in March of 2020. 

I had a lot going on with that, and the big band album on top of it was just too much. So I asked Danny if he could help me arrange the big band charts. It was so easy to work with him. If you look up his music, you're going to think that he is mostly a classic jazz type of guy. But he really loves modern jazz, which he just hasn't had much of an outlet for. After we’d worked together a lot, he also sent over some orchestral scores he had done and they were amazing. They just hadn’t been performed. So I thought he would be perfect for this project, and that this could be an opportunity for him to write for a chamber ensemble in a modern jazz context.

TJG: I want to hear more about what you learned about yourself from the plankton, but first—what inspired you to include dance and visual arts in this project?

S: I grew up playing classical piano and violin. Then when I moved from Thailand to Sweden, I went to an elementary school that was for choir. There were a thousand kids at that school who could sing. We had seven hours of choir classes a week. It was massive. Moving from Thailand to Sweden to start at that school felt very much like going to Hogwarts, because that time in my life also happened at the same time as all the Harry Potter movies were coming out. So it was very, very exciting to go to school with all the wizard kids—all the kids who could sing. 

Anyway, I came from a classical music background, then as a teenager I fell in love with jazz. That’s why I moved to New York. Sweden is a very pop-focused country where there's a lot of emphasis on songwriting and pop production. So coming to New York, I learned more about jazz and Afro-American traditions. I felt like I could give back to the scene by infusing jazz with my background of classical music, Thai traditional music, Swedish pop, and electronics. My hope is that I can bring some value to the scene by infusing jazz with what I grew up with and what is authentic to me.

But even though I've been in all of these different worlds separately, this is the first opportunity that has really given me a chance to combine all of these musical influences and interests. It’s also the first time I’m working with visuals and dance. Interdisciplinary work was important to me because I’m dealing with such complex topics. With climate topics, like we talked about earlier, it’s hard to put certain things in the lyrics. But if I embed the music with data instead, most people can't access or understand it without me explaining it to them. So having a visual or dance component can make it easier for people to make that connection. 

Again, it goes back to the whole idea of being interconnected. Everyone is different. Some people are moved by music, but some people are moved by visuals, and others are moved by movement. So I wanted to create an opportunity for people to connect in the way that works best for them. That’s also true for the different genres. Some people are more connected to classical, some are more connected to electronics—there's no one way of doing things.

TJG: Can you tell me a little more about the structure of the work and how that was influenced by your research?

S: This could be a good segue to answer the question about the plankton, too. When Nitcha, Danny, and I were working with the scientists, we interviewed them, observed their work, and just had a lot of conversations with them. From that time together, some themes emerged. 

The first theme that came up was the “unseen”—getting exposed to the things we can't see and the mystery that comes from that. We decided that would be the first movement of the suite. 

The second movement theme is, “there's no one way.” That was an idea that came up all the time both in the plankton world and in the fungal world. There’s no one way of doing things. For plankton, specifically, there are plankton that are colonial plankton. They’re multiple organisms specialized in certain tasks working together. They don't have a central nervous system, so it's not a brain deciding how the whole colonial organism functions. But that doesn't mean that it's not as sophisticated or smart as organisms that have a single brain. It’s just a different way of doing things, and in many ways it can actually be more effective.

Connecting that back to society, people have an idea of how society needs to run—that there needs to be a hierarchy, that people need to work 9-to-5. There are certain structures where we have said to ourselves that this is the best way of having a functional society. But looking at colonial organisms in the plankton world, it's actually scientifically proven that they're more effective when each individual in the colony can do their own thing. They specialize in their own thing and they're doing it in their own way. It’s not forced. I feel like there’s so much we can learn from that as a society. That ideology can help free people and allow them to do the things they want to do in a way that they do best. We can trust that that will support the ecosystem instead of forcing everyone to do things in the same way. 

The third movement of the suite is about community. In both the plankton world and the fungal world, ecosystems are super important. Everything is dependent on each other. Even things that are considered to be a parasite are important for ecosystems. It's about balance. There is actually a song we're going to perform called “Parasite” and it was inspired by the idea of mushroom spores. Most spores fall right next to the mushroom, but 1% of the time a spore can get caught by a wind and travel up to six kilometers (about four miles).

That reminds me a lot about the immigrant experience. For whatever reason, you might get caught in a wind that takes you somewhere in the world. Once you land, you don't know if it's temporary or permanent—you don’t know if you can grow roots or not. You also don't know if you're going to be accepted in that new ecosystem or if you're going to be seen as a parasite. 

The fourth movement, “cyclical,” is about birth and death and decomposition. Then the fifth movement is about hope and wonder. So much of our way forward is to see the beauty of things and to have wonder and be curious.

TJG: How have you approached the interdisciplinary nature of this work?

S: This is the premiere of the work. It’s a massive project, and it's the first time I'm doing interdisciplinary work. I've worked with visuals before, but I've never worked with dance in a live performance. What makes this truly interdisciplinary and different from my previous shows is the interactions. There are moments where the visuals are doing something that the musicians will react to. There are other moments where the dancer is doing something that the musicians will react to. So it's not just one-way, where the dance and visuals are supporting the music. It goes in all directions. Again, this is connected to the plankton and the fungal worlds, because there's no one way that things are interconnected. Everything is coexisting all at the same time. 

TJG: Do you have future plans for the project?

S: After the show, we will continue to write more music. The full show will probably be closer to two hours, not the one hour which we’ll perform at The Jazz Gallery. We also plan to record an album later this fall, so keep a lookout for that.

Sirintip plays The Jazz Gallery on Wednesday, June 26 presenting her new work, Mycelium. The group features Sirintip on vocals, composition, & efx; Andrew Gutauskas on flute, clarinet, & bass clarinet; Danny Jonokuchi on trumpet & composition; Ben Wendel on sax & efx; Zach Brock on violin & efx; Kalia Vandever on trombone & efx; Kengchakaj on piano & modular synthesis; Kaisa Maensivu on upright & electric bass; Nolan Byrd on drums; Nitcha Tothong on visual projections; and dancer Marie Lloyd. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. ET. $25 general admission ($15 for members), $35 cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 Livestream ($5 for members). Purchase tickets here.