| Latin Jazz |
Few albums announce themselves with such quiet authority, and such explosive intent. Ellipsis is not merely a collaboration between three masters; it is a statement of purpose, and one that may well come to define the sound and spirit of jazz in 2026. At a moment when genre boundaries feel increasingly irrelevant, this record proposes something rarer: continuity through reinvention.
At its center stands Michael League, label director, composer, arranger, bassist, and producer, widely known as the founder of Snarky Puppy and Bokanté, ensembles that have spent the past decade dissolving the traditional lines between jazz, funk, global music, and contemporary composition. League’s work has never been about categories, and here he goes further still, shaping a Latin jazz vision that feels less like a style exercise than a living, breathing organism.
He is joined by two of the most formidable drummers and bandleaders of our time. Antonio Sánchez, born in Mexico City, brings with him a résumé that reads like a modern jazz canon: the Academy Award–winning score for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman; more than twenty years of collaboration with guitarist Pat Metheny; eleven solo albums; and a string of recordings that sit at the intersection of jazz, cinematic music, and experimental forms. Sánchez is not simply a virtuoso, he is a composer of momentum, a musician who understands rhythm as narrative.
Equally vital is Pedro Martinez, the brilliant Cuban percussionist and vocalist from Havana, whose artistry carries the deep imprint of West African religious chants and rhythmic systems that survived the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of enslavement. Martinez is not quoting tradition; he embodies it. Across his performances and collaborations, his music has consistently produced moments of astonishing intensity, spiritual, physical, and immediate.
The result is music that resists easy classification. This is not Latin jazz as heritage, nor jazz with “world” embellishments. It is Latin jazz beyond category, rooted, forward-looking, and unapologetically contemporary. There is an unmistakable choreographic dimension to the project: these rhythms almost demand movement, provoking an instinctive urge to dance. One can easily imagine a perceptive choreographer translating this material into a postmodern ballet, where pulse becomes gesture and improvisation becomes form.
It has been a long time since such energy has been captured on record. To find a comparable sense of propulsion and risk, one must look back to the final, electric years of Miles Davis, when the studio itself became an instrument, or to the peak productions of Michael Jackson, where rhythm, texture, and intent aligned with absolute clarity. What Ellipsis shares with those moments is not stylistic resemblance, but audacity: the confidence to push forward without abandoning the past.
In a single album, this seemingly impromptu trio has forged a strikingly coherent identity, one that feels both complete and open-ended. “An ellipsis is three dots, and there are three of us,” League explains, reflecting on the album’s title. “But an ellipsis is also a grammatical device that suggests continuation. If you say, ‘You could come and…,’ you don’t know what happens next, but you know it’s part of something ongoing. The idea behind this group is to take a deeply rooted musical tradition and carry it forward in a way that feels new and unexpected.”
That philosophy is audible in every track. The music feels simultaneously disruptive and grounded, modern, ethnic, rhythmic, and vocal, its apparent spontaneity underpinned by a long period of gestation. The project began as early as 2010 in New York, when all three musicians were living there. Both Martinez and Sánchez independently approached League about collaborating, and the trio began meeting regularly in League’s studio, exchanging ideas and slowly shaping a shared language.
Their chemistry first surfaced publicly in 2018, during an improvised and electrifying trio performance at the North Sea Jazz Festival, where League was artist in residence. By 2021, the process had evolved further. Sánchez and Martinez spent two days improvising at Manhattan’s Power Station studio, while League, having relocated in 2020 to a centuries-old house in a Catalan village, complete with a top-floor studio, followed the sessions remotely via Zoom. As the drummers sent him excerpts of their improvisations, League edited, structured, and orchestrated the material from afar, transforming raw impulse into architectural form.
Then came a decisive creative phase. “It was an incredible experience to jam in the studio and create our own forms and structures in real time,” Sánchez recalls. “I tried to respond to what Pedrito was doing, to fill in the spaces. Watching him record vocals was unbelievable. He would improvise an entire verse as the lead voice, ask the engineer to play it back, then record another improvisation, again and again, until he had built this astonishing choir of five Pedros, each doing something different, completely in the moment.”
What emerges is an album that is far more complex, and more generous, than it initially appears. Ellipsis is a true artistic osmosis, a work that succeeds in going to the core of things while remaining resolutely innovative. One has to look back to the period between 1980 and 1995 to find music so ambitious in conception and so exhilarating in execution. Those who, like myself, remember being invited to private listening sessions of Miles Davis’s Tutu will recognize the sensation: leaving the room overwhelmed, searching for superlatives.
The final challenge now lies ahead, to be fully embraced by its audience. In such matters, timing is everything. There must be an alignment between artistic intent and the historical moment in which it unfolds. And in a period marked by uncertainty, fragmentation, and a quiet hunger for collective energy, Ellipsis arrives with a rare proposition: music that honors tradition while refusing stasis, music that moves forward without erasing its roots.
It is entirely possible that this album, and this trio, will make the difference.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, January 6th 2026
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Musicians :
Michael League: Bass, producer
Pedrito Martinez: Master percussionist, vocalist
Antonio Sánchez: Acclaimed drummer, composer
Track Listing:
Obbakoso
Cominando
Variant
Mi Tambor
Suuru
Congo No Calla