Somni by Snarky Puppy, Metropole Orkest & Jules Buckley

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.”

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.”

We are a band of musicians playing music on instruments.

'Somni,' our new album with the Metropole Orkest, is out now on GroundUP Music