Trio with Nate Smith & James Francies

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.
 

For nearly two decades, Nate Smith has been a key piece in reinvigorating the international music scene with his visceral, instinctive, and deep-rooted style of drumming. He holds a diverse and ample résumé — which includes work with esteemed jazz leading lights such as Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, José James, John Patitucci, Ravi Coltrane, and Somi among many others. His 2x GRAMMY-nominated debut album, KINFOLK: Postcards from Everywhere, sees Smith fusing his original modern jazz compositions with R&B, pop, and hip-hop. He’s also ventured into the pop/rock world with recent collaborations with Vulfpeck spinoff band The Fearless Flyers, Brittany Howard (of Alabama Shakes) and performances with songwriters Emily King and Van Hunt. In recent years, through a series of viral videos, he has emerged as one of the most influential and popular drummers of his generation. His videos have been viewed millions of times and have inspired countless musicians and fans. In September of 2018, he released his first ever solo drumset album Pocket Change.  

As a composer and arranger, Mr. Smith received two (2) GRAMMY nominations for his composition “Home Free (for Peter Joe)” for best instrumental composition and best arrangement (instrumental or a cappella). Of the KINFOLK: Postcards From Everywhere project, Mr. Smith says: “It was my goal to start with the simplest of elements, singable melodies with familiar harmonies, and use them to weave stories that felt nostalgic without being overly sentimental. Pieces like ‘Retold’ and ‘Pages’ use familiar, consonant harmonies as a means of evoking the listener to “reach back” for a memory, while ‘Skip Step’ and Spinning Down’ use layers of rhythm to express a feeling of unsettled tension. ‘Disenchantment: The Weight’ uses an ascending/descending chord progression to simulate a deep sigh of resignation, while ‘Home Free (for Peter Joe)’ uses a hymn like melody as a means of evoking feelings of both solemnity and ceremony.

Plenty of young musicians show promise, but very few enjoy the sort of meteoric rise that pianist, keyboardist and composer James Francies is currently experiencing. At only 24, he’s played with jazz headliners like Pat Metheny, Chris Potter, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Stefon Harris, Eric Harland, and Terrace Martin, and racked up equally impressive credits in hip-hop and R&B: from shows with Ms. Lauryn Hill, José James, Common, and NAS, to studio time for Chance the Rapper’s Grammy-winning hit “No Problem”, Mark Ronson , Childish Gambino, YEBBA, Drake, and Kodak Black, to appearances with The Roots on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon alongside his mentor and friend Questlove.

Now comes Flight, the extraordinary debut album that welcomes Francies into the storied Blue Note Records family and finds him melding his jazz mastery and pop experience on 11 searching, engaging tracks. But as bold and new as this moment might seem for Francies, it’s also a homecoming, in more ways than one. Francies, like his Blue Note predecessors Robert Glasper, Jason Moran, Chris Dave and Kendrick Scott, is a proud Houstonite and a graduate of that city’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA), one of the nation’s most reliable incubators for era-defining jazz talent. “Just to follow in their footsteps, let alone in the footsteps of Herbie Hancock, Bud Powell and all of these other artists who recorded for the label, it’s an honor,” Francies says. “And there’s a responsibility that comes with it too.”

Called “a pianist with liquid dynamism in his touch” by the New York Times, Francies started on piano around age 4, with classical training and an education in the music of the church. Blessed with perfect pitch and synesthesia (or the ability to hear in colors), he attended his first jazz concert, by Houston-born piano legend Joe Sample, at age 6, and began studying jazz in junior high. Many deep influences followed, some of them surprising. Along with pianists like Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Mulgrew Miller, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Taylor Eigsti, a longtime friend, Francies points to guitarists Allan Holdsworth and Mike Moreno and such trumpet masters as Nicholas Payton, Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan. A highly decorated tenure at HSPVA—including spots in the Monterey Jazz Festival’s Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, the Thelonious Monk Institute All-Star Jazz Sextet and the GRAMMY Jazz Session Combo—earned Francies a full scholarship to Manhattan’s New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

While he was earning his degree, Francies was also rapidly ascending the jazz ranks and building a professional career. Early bandstand time with Jeff “Tain” Watts helped him cut his teeth and raise his profile, as did his first international tour, with Chris Dave and the Drumhedz. Chris Potter tapped him for his trio along with drummer Eric Harland, and Pat Metheny assembled a trio with Francies and drummer Nate Smith. Francies’ own group, Kinetic, has garnered buzz at events like Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, NYC Winterfest, and BRIC JazzFest. He met Questlove and Roots keyboardist James Poyser a few years ago, and since then has become a go-to resource for Quest and company—subbing for Poyser on Roots concerts and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; participating in the Roots-produced Hamilton cast recording, in addition to other film and TV score work organized by Quest; and, currently, collaborating with The Roots emcee Black Thought on a Broadway show.

Francies says that his experiences outside of jazz have helped him with concepts like “assembling sounds, consistency, delivery and the ability to support,” and it certainly isn’t difficult to hear these lessons throughout Flight. An embodiment of the Blue Note ethos at this thriving moment in the label’s history, it’s a dynamic, ultramodern jazz record, infused with pop, hip-hop and R&B, that remains entertaining from start to finish.

 James Francies is a Blue Note Recording Artist, endorsed by Yamaha Pianos, Korg Keyboards, and is an IWC Brand Ambassador.