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Jon Irabagon: Server Farm
by Dan McClenaghan
"The times they are a-changin.'" Bob Dylan said that in 1964. He was right. In 2025, they are still changing, perhaps most notably with the emergence of artificial intelligence. That previously slow creep--outlined so accurately in Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, paired with Stanely Kubrick's movie of the same name--will build to a tipping point leading to an implosion. The takeover is inevitable. The only way to address it is through the arts. This is ...
Continue ReadingJon Irabagon: Server Farm
by Mike Jurkovic
Warning! Warning! Heads up! Spoiler alert! Server Farm has the potential to take your head to some random places. Some alarming (as all artists should be these days), Some cacophonous. Some claustrophobic. Others freeing, fleeting, fervent. Server Farm, saxophonist/composer Jon Irabagon's heatedly precise and prescient head-on clash with the threat of AI blisters the binary codes and algorithms of the connected world (which makes us all individual heads of the Hydra) both surgically and haphazardly, letting it all ...
Continue ReadingJon Irabagon, Frank Carlberg & Dennis Egberth
by Maurice Hogue
Artificial Intelligence. Is it good, is it bad? It's a key component of allaboutjazz.com we know that. Saxophonist and composer Jon Irabagon and an amazing tentet put AI under their musical microscope and the results of their examination are now available on the new “Server Farm." There are similar exploratory approaches on new albums by pianist Frank Carlberg with a very strong quintet, tackling music formed form Carlberg's life experiences, the duo Dream Brigade (drummer Lesley Mok and keyboardist Phillip ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Barker: Bakunawa
by Fran Kursztejn
William Parker turned 73 last month, yet despite sharing his newest release with the 54-year-old Andrew Barker and 46-year-old Jon Irabagon, his playing has never been as buoyant as it is here. All three New York staples have played with one another in various duos and orchestral arrangements (Barker himself is an alumni of Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra), but Bakunawa marks the first time all three have been recorded together. In common fashion for Parker projects, ...
Continue ReadingJon Irabagon: I Don't Hear Nothin' but the Blues Volume 3 Part 2: Exuberant Scars
by Hrayr Attarian
Saxophonist Jon Irabagon is a master improviser who routinely creates provocative and moving works. Exuberant Scars, the fourth episode in his I Don't Hear Nothin' But The Blues series is no exception. Irabagon is joined by like-minded musicians on a single, 46-minutes long, spontaneously created piece. Drummer Mike Pride, who has appeared on all four I Don't Hear Nothin' But The Blues, opens the performance with chiming percussion and splashing cymbals. He sets a cinematic ambience. Irabagon's breathy ...
Continue ReadingPatricia Brennan: Breaking Stretch
by Dan McClenaghan
On her first two albums, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan worked with a quartet comprised of three percussion instruments, herself on vibes and marimba, joined by percussionist Mauricio Herrera and drummer Marcus Gilmore, with a bassist Kim Cass. Momentum in large part, is the name of the game. For Breaking Stretch she expands her musical universe, adding trumpeter Adam O'Farrill and saxophonists Mark Shim and Jon Irabagon. This proved a good move; her musical universe in this septet setting has an energy ...
Continue ReadingPatricia Brennan: Breaking Stretch
by Mike Jurkovic
Wild-willed vibraphonist Patricia Brennan gets straight down to business without any fanciful mission declaration with the Afro-Cuban, effusively powered, clear-the-dancefloor and blow-the-ceiling-off this joint “Los Otros Yo (The Other Selves)," the opening cut of her third album Breaking Stretch. She does so in a captivatingly, wickedly good way. Brennan--who has added much vitality to music by such other big thinkers as Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson, Anna Webber, Michael Formanek--began her musical education at 4 years old listening to ...
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