Michael League is a 5-time Grammy Award-winning musician based in Catalonia, Spain. He is the creator and bandleader of instrumental music ensemble Snarky Puppy and blues/world group Bokanté, founder of the record label and music curation source GroundUP Music, and co-founder/artistic director of the GroundUP Music Festival.
Michael attended the University of North Texas' jazz studies program for 4 years, then moved to nearby Dallas for another 3 years, where he worked with some of the most influential figures in modern gospel, R&B, and soul music, and was mentored by legendary keyboardist Bernard Wright (Miles Davis, Chaka Khan) before moving to Brooklyn, New York, in 2009, where he spent 9 years before relocating to his current home of Catalonia, Spain. As an instrumentalist and producer, he has worked with a diverse range of artists in gospel (Kirk Franklin, Walter Hawkins, Marvin Sapp, Israel Houghton), jazz (Terence Blanchard, Esperanza Spalding, Joshua Redman, Eric Harland, Chris Potter), pop (Silvana Estrada, Julian Lennon, Laura Mvula, Joe Walsh, Michael McDonald), folk (David Crosby, Chris Thile, Becca Stevens, Lau Noah, Silvia Pérez-Cruz), and world music (Youssou Ndour, Gilberto Gil, Eliades Ochoa of the Buena Vista Social Club, Fatoumata Diawara, Bassekou Kouyate, Kardeş Türküler), earning Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations for his work with Afro-Peruvian legend, Susana Baca, on Palabras Urgentes and the Venezuelan group, C4 Trio, on Back to Four.
As a sophomore in college, Michael formed the instrumental ensemble Snarky Puppy. As producer, primary composer and bandleader for the group over the last two decades, he has earned five Grammy awards and played over 1500 concerts on six continents. In 2016, he formed the band Bokanté, receiving three Grammy nominations for their second and third albums, What Heat and History, respectively. In 2021, Michael released his debut solo album, So Many Me, acting as sole composer, arranger, and performer. In 2023, he and English pianist Bill Laurance released their first duo album, Where You Wish You Were, which was followed in 2024 by the release of their second album, Keeping Company, on which Michael plays oud and acoustic guitar bass. In 2024, he formally launched the collaborative project, Elipsis, with co-leaders Pedrito Martinez and Antonio Sánchez, and joined by guest keyboardist and vocalist, Glenda Del E, with the objective of creating a fresh and explorative context for Cuba’s musical Yoruba tradition.
GroundUP Music, formed in 2013, has expanded from independent record label (home to albums by David Crosby, Charlie Hunter, Becca Stevens, Cory Henry, Taylor Eigsti, Varijashree Venugopal, Brian Blade, and many more) to live event curation, launching the annual GroundUP Music Festival in 2017 in Miami Beach, Florida. It has played host to artists like Béla Fleck, Lalah Hathaway, Andrew Bird, The Wood Brothers, Robert Glasper, Concha Buika, Terence Blanchard, Joshua Redman, Jacob Collier, Madison Cunningham, Tank and the Bangas, Chris Thile, Louis Cole’s Huge Band, and Michael McDonald, among many others.
Michael is passionately committed to music education and outreach, having given clinics and masterclasses at over 200 schools around the world. In 2020, Michael and GroundUP Music Festival director Paul Lehr launched the GroundUP Music Foundation, dedicated to community enrichment through the arts.
