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Jon Irabagon: Server Farm

By Mike Jurkovic
February 19, 2025
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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

saxophone, tenor

" data-original-title="" title="">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 and the collateral fall where it may. At the eye of this maelstrom, Irabagon's regular quartet—pianist/keyboardist

Matt Mitchell

piano
b.1975

" data-original-title="" title="">Matt Mitchell, bassist

Chris Lightcap

bass
b.1971

" data-original-title="" title="">Chris Lightcap and drummer

Dan Weiss

drums

" data-original-title="" title="">Dan Weiss; are joined by violinist/vocalist

Mazz Swift

violin

" data-original-title="" title="">Mazz Swift, trumpeter

Peter Evans

trumpet

" data-original-title="" title="">Peter Evans, guitarists

Miles Okazaki

guitar
b.1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Miles Okazaki and

Wendy Eisenberg

guitar

" data-original-title="" title="">Wendy Eisenberg and acoustic bassist

Michael Formanek

bass, acoustic
b.1958

" data-original-title="" title="">Michael Formanek and together make a whole of good noise in the grand attempt to wake us from our screen-locked stupor.

Take, for example, the completely unexpected "Graceful Exit." An elegant, slow-dance ballad ala the master himself —

Duke Ellington

piano
1899 - 1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Duke Ellington —until it is not. Colliding within the throes of an onrushing digital storm, the track surges on victorious to swing once more. It all then gets swallowed up by the dark, electronic entreaties introducing "Spy," a lucid mash of spoken word (spoken warning), more Ellingtonia, and the free growls, scrapes, and dissonance provided by one and all. Irabagon and Evans sound especially like they have just dropped in from a full blow-out

John Coltrane

saxophone
1926 - 1967

" data-original-title="" title="">John Coltrane session for Ascension (Impulse!, 1966)

Emerging from the ancient tones of Lorenzo's kulintang, a traditional set of gongs from the Philippines, "Colocation" pummels into consciousness—shape-shifting, terra-forming, equal parts

Carla Bley

piano
1938 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Carla Bley and Jack Johnson (Columbia, 1971) era

Miles Davis

trumpet
1926 - 1991

" data-original-title="" title="">Miles Davis—all within the opening thirteen minutes. "Routers" has rhythms akimbo, as each musician adds his/her data flow to the current. Weiss and Lightcap keep the track grounded and furthering forward. The fiery, fomenting "Singularities," a bursting-at-the-seams Irabagon composition with so many twists and turns it is near impossible to document, completes Server Farm's scorching indictment on our dependency (surrender?) to all that is shiny and digital.

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Track Listing

Colocation; Routers; Singularities; Graceful Exit; Spy.

Personnel

Jon Irabagon

saxophone, tenor

Mazz Swift

violin

Peter Evans

trumpet

Miles Okazaki

guitar

Wendy Eisenberg

guitar

Matt Mitchell

piano

Michael Formanek

bass, acoustic

Chris Lightcap

bass

Dan Weiss

drums

Levy Lorenzo

drums

Additional Instrumentation

Jon Irabagon: sopranino saxophone, effects; Mazz Swift: vocals (5); Peter Evans: flugelhorn; Matt Mitchell: Fender Rhodes, Prophet-6; Levy Lorenzo: kulintang, laptop, electronics, vibraphone.

Album information

Title: Server Farm | Year Released: 2025 | Record Label: Irrabagast

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Jon Irabagon Concerts

Sep 17 Wed

Barry Altschul 3Dom Factor

Entropy Gallery
Santa Fe, NM

Nov 21 Fri

Jon Irabagon Quintet

Firehouse 12
New Haven, CT

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