Snarky Puppy - Snarky Puppy Europe 2027

A collective honoured five times with GRAMMY Awards®, Snarky Puppy have ‘always been a band that puts the sound of the music front and centre’, explains Michael League, the group's leader and bassist. Drawing on a broad range of influences – funk, rhythm and blues, hard rock, classic soul, contemporary gospel, new technologies, fusion and jazz – Snarky Puppy are not quite a jazz band, nor really a fusion band, and certainly not a jam band. The best approach is perhaps to follow the advice of Nate Chinen of the New York Times, who, writing during an online discussion devoted to the group, said they should be ‘taken for what they are, rather than judged for what they are not’.

‘Our sound world has expanded considerably over the years,’ explains League. ‘At the beginning, we were more jazz, more cerebral and more focused on the music itself. On joining the Dallas scene, our music became groovier, more emotional and, in a way, deeper. We became more focused on conveying a clear message, one that is accessible to the listener without oversimplifying our music.’

In January 2025, the group once again collaborated with the Metropole Orkest, a hybrid ensemble based in the Netherlands and renowned for blending jazz, classical music and popular music on a symphonic scale. Recorded live over three evenings, from 17 to 19 January 2025 in Utrecht, this project brings the two ensembles together once again, ten years after their first collaboration, Sylva. Released in 2015, that orchestral suite earned them the GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album the following year. The result of this renewed reunion, Somni was released in November 2025 on GroundUP Music.

‘It is by far the most ambitious project we have ever undertaken… and yet it is also one of the albums whose making was the most natural,’ says League.