Snarky Puppy

BIOGRAPHY

Somni is the second collaborative album by Snarky Puppy — the GRAMMY-winning, genre-fluid collective led by bassist-composer Michael League — and Metropole Orkest, the Netherlands-based hybrid ensemble renowned for fusing jazz, classical, and popular music on a symphonic scale. Captured live over three nights (January 17–19, 2025) in Utrecht, the project reunites the two groups a decade after their first joint effort, Sylva — an orchestral suite released in 2015 that earned the GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album the following year. Somni will be released November 21, 2025 via GroundUP Music.

Over more than two decades, Snarky Puppy has cultivated a singular identity rooted in ensemble cohesion and stylistic curiosity. The band now holds five GRAMMY Awards: Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for Sylva (2016), Culcha Vulcha (2017), Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2021), and Empire Central (2023), plus Best R&B Performance for “Something,” their 2014 collaboration with Lalah Hathaway. Known for electrifying live shows and a rotating cast of top-tier players, they continue to bridge jazz, funk, soul, and global traditions.

Metropole Orkest, founded in 1945, is the world’s only full-time orchestra dedicated to jazz and pop music, blending the tonal range of a symphony with the rhythmic agility of a big band. Under the leadership of conductors such as Vince Mendoza and Jules Buckley, the ensemble has collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Brian Eno, Gregory Porter, and Jacob Collier, and shared in the GRAMMY win for Sylva alongside Snarky Puppy in 2016.

While Sylva looked outward, painting cinematic portraits of the natural world, Somni turns inward to the intangible realm of dreams. The title comes from the Catalan word for “dream,” reflecting League’s life in Barcelona. He began composing the material in rural Japan, where he spent a month alone in an Airbnb. “I just kind of gave myself a month to write,” he recalls. “It was in the middle of nowhere … completely alone.” Those sketches, shaped by introspection and stillness, were later developed with the full Snarky Puppy lineup — now featuring four drummers — and the 50-plus-member Metropole Orkest. “It’s about diving into a bunch of different elements of this thing that we do every day,” League says, “that nobody understands.”

“Waves Upon Waves,” the album’s opener, became the seed for Somni’s larger concept. League had originally written its theme during the Empire Central sessions but set it aside. “It kind of had this dreamlike quality,” he recalls. The piece gently swells in energy while never fully settling into wakefulness or surrendering to sleep — conjuring the strange tension of drifting between the two.

“As You Are” draws from a familiar dream sensation: recognizing someone you know, even though they appear entirely different. “You know that a person in your dream is your mother, but their face looks like Bill Clinton or something,” League says. That surreal mutability becomes musical as a central phrase passes between instruments, transforming as it goes. “There are these things that exist from the beginning to the end of the song, but they change shape,” he explains — a reflection of dream logic rendered orchestrally.

“Chimera” evokes a mischievous, volatile dream in which the subconscious runs free. “It’s kind of in between a nightmare and a dream where you observe yourself doing things you’re too shy or reserved to do in real life,” League says. The finale layers four grooves — each in a different key and tempo, assigned to different sections of the orchestra and drum set players. “That was by far the hardest thing we did on the whole record,” he notes. “It’s hard for good musicians to not listen to each other.”

“Between Worlds” depicts the transition from waking to sleep. “This tune is like the moment where you're going from the conscious state of mind to the dream state,” League says. He describes the piece as a kind of lullaby with an uneven rhythmic structure, meant to convey the delicate imbalance of that shift. “It has a bit of a lopsidedness … supposed to symbolize this imbalance … of the transition from the world that we all know … into this kind of other world.”

“Recurrent” was inspired by a fever dream League had as a child: running through a field as massive metal gears rolled behind him. “Just at the moment where the first one would start to crush me, I would wake up, soaked in sweat,” he recalls. The track’s momentum is driven by a repeating rhythmic figure that mirrors the terror and relentlessness of the dream. “There would be a moment where I would feel like everything was cool … and then they would appear again.”

“Drift” marks the moment of full immersion in sleep — when the outside world drops away. “It’s like the moment after the Between Worlds moment,” League explains. The music unfolds gradually, with angular melodies and “some strange edges to it,” before the full orchestra enters. “It’s like the feeling of really being carried off into this other bizarre world.”

“Only Here” explores the disorientation of waking from a dream so vivid it temporarily feels real. “I thought I was that person’s partner,” League says. “It took about 10 seconds of being conscious to recognize that my real reality is different than the last eight hours.” The track title refers to the dream state as a world that exists “only here and nowhere else.”

“It Stays With You” captures the emotional afterimage of a dream — that lingering sense of meaning even as the details fall away. “The feeling of it remains,” League says. “Sometimes the dream that I have — by mid-afternoon, it’s still kind of on me in a certain way.” The piece closes the album with that resonance: ephemeral, ungraspable, but deeply felt.

Though entirely instrumental, Somni speaks an emotional language. Each piece explores a different aspect of the dream state: shifting identities, surreal logic, phantom intimacy, and the strange emotional residue that lingers after waking. “Instrumental music lends itself to exploring abstract concepts,” League explains, “because a lack of lyrics allows for a lot of imagination on the part of the listener.” Despite the project’s scale, the experience of making it was unusually seamless.

“It’s by far the most ambitious project we’ve ever done … and it was one of the smoothest records we’ve ever made,” he says. “Every individual team just absolutely did their job with so much care and love — from the camera operators to our production team.” That spirit was reflected in the room. “The instant feedback was the warmest we’ve ever had. It was encouraging to know that after 22 years of doing what we do, the music is reaching people.”