Snarky Puppy to Perform at the Kauffman Center on June 11

Three-time GRAMMY Award winners join the 2018-2019 Kauffman Center Presents series

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Fusion-influenced, genre-bending group Snarky Puppy brings its brand of exploratory jazz, funk and rock to the Muriel Kauffman Theatre stage on Tuesday, June 11. The concert is part of the 2018-2019 Kauffman Center Presents series.

Displaying a rare and delicate mixture of sophisticated composition, harmony and improvisation, Snarky Puppy has been praised for being “big, rich and funky” by NPR Music.

The band features a wide-ranging collection of more than 30 musicians known as “The Fam,” centered around bassist, composer and bandleader Michael League. Each live performance highlights a rotating cast of about a dozen musicians, ensuring every show is different. The group has earned GRAMMY Awards for Best R&B Performance (2014) and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album (2016, 2017).

Formed in Denton, Texas in 2004, Snarky Puppy started as a group of college friends from the University of North Texas jazz studies program. Three years later, it was a serendipitous intersection with the Dallas gospel and R&B community that transformed the music into something funkier, more direct and more visceral. That’s when the group absorbed musicians like Robert “Sput” Searight (drums), Shaun Martin (keyboards) and Bobby Sparks (keyboards), and were heavily influenced by legendary keyboardist Bernard Wright (Miles Davis, Chaka Khan, Marcus Miller).

Since then, Snarky Puppy has grown to represent musical cultures from around the world. The past four years have brought dramatic changes for the band, as they’ve found themselves held up as major figures in the jazz world after a decade of relentless touring. The individual members maintain busy schedules as sidemen (with such artists as Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, and D’Angelo), producers (for Kirk Franklin, David Crosby, and Salif Keïta), and solo artists (many of whom are on the band’s indy label, GroundUP Music).

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