UCSB Arts & Lectures will present Snarky Puppy, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1 at the Arlington Theatre.

Ahead of the Snarky Puppy performance will be a Jazz & Gelato Season Kickoff Party at 6 p.m., offering a live set by KCRW’s Nassir Nassirzadeh, prizes, complimentary sweet treats from local creameries, light installations, and open art galleries.

The event will feature math-based light installations by UCSB alumni Tai Rodrig and Udo Gyene.

With more than a decade of relentless touring and recording in all but complete obscurity, the Texas-bred, now multiple Grammy Award-winning Snarky Puppy is a quasi-collective with as many as 20 members in regular rotation.

Snarky Puppy’s Grammy awards include Best R&B Performance in 2014, and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2016, 2017, 2021 and 2023.

At its core, the band represents the convergence of both black and white American music culture with various accents from around the world.

Snarky Puppy has earned a reputation as one of the hardest working and most sophisticated proponents of jazz and funk. Dueling drummers and a rotating roster of soloists keep the rhythmic fires burning at all its performances.

The defining characteristic of Snarky Puppy’s music is the joy of performing together in the perpetual push to grow creatively.

Always evolving in its musical output, each new Snarky Puppy record brings a new vision and progressive direction.

“Snarky Puppy has always been a band that prioritizes the sound of music, our rule is that it can’t sound like it sounded before,” said bandleader Michael League. “The music has to feel like it’s moving somewhere.”

And moving somewhere it has, since 10 friends got together at the University of North Texas back in 2004. For Snarky Puppy fans, the question is: where will Snarky Puppy go next?