• CONGRATS to Snarky Puppy - just named to the iTunes "Best of 2012 Albums" in the Jazz category.
• With the release of their latest, 2-disc album/DVD "groundUP" (Ropeadope Records), Snarky Puppy has gone from an underground secret to one of the most internationally respected names in instrumental music.
• This band is on the pulse of the youth jazz movement worldwide. Their sheet music is part of music school curriculum in high schools and universities in the US and Canada. They have over 20,000 facebook likes and 2 million combined YouTube views.
Snarky Puppy turned a very definitive corner in 2012. The band released the critically-acclaimed live, in-studio DVD groundUP, which immediately soared to #3 on the ITUNES jazz charts and #14 on Billboard. YouTube views have skyrocketed to over 2 million combined. Heading to Europe for the first time, Snarky Puppy was met with sell-out crowds (including encore performances in London and Paris) and accosted by representatives of the continent's largest jazz festivals. The spring trip was so successful that a fall follow-up tour was quickly booked, including sold-out performances at the London Jazz Festival and the prestigious New Morning in Paris among many others. Home audiences were no exception, as over half of Snarky Puppy's 140 North American shows sold out. The band has gained a reputation for not only putting on one of the most unique live experiences in the instrumental world, but also attracting to its shows the biggest names in the music community.
2013 will see Snarky Puppy's debut in India, Australia (Melbourne International Jazz Festival), and Russia, as well as more extended touring in Europe and North America. The band also plans to record 3 albums over the course of the year, the first being a collaboration with 12 different singers, from Grammy-winners to unknown talents. The second is a project in conjunction with Chamber Music of America and Roanoke's Jefferson Center for the Arts in which the band will record and produce original material written by 17-year-old Burundian multi-instrumentalist Bukuru Celestin. And finally, another live DVD featuring the whole Snarky Puppy family will be recorded and released by the end of 2013.
The 3-time Dallas Observer Music Award winning group ("Best Jazz Act" 2008, 2009, 2010) fuses a deep knowledge and respect for musical tradition with sonic and conceptual innovation in a way that is able to reach the most critical---or most carefree---of audiences. Cicily Janus, in her seminal 2010 book The New Face of Jazz, interviewed band leader Michael League about Snarky's adventurous, yet traditionally respective, tact called the group "one of the most inventive in sound and funk since Maynard Ferguson's fusion years."
The core of the group, which remains consistent, based now in Brooklyn features Grammy Award-winners Robert "Sput" Searight on drums (God's Property, Snoop Dogg) and Shaun Martin on keys (Kirk Franklin, Erykah Badu). Led by award-winning bassist/composer Michael League, Snarky Puppy delivers raw funk and sensitive dynamics, relentless pocket and lyrical melodicism, lush harmony and soulful simplicity, and most importantly, a delicate mixture of composition and improvisation.
www.snarkypuppy.com
