Composer, bandleader, saxophonist, and label-owner Jon Irabagon is in the midst of a massive 2025, and there is still over a third of the year left to unravel. Irabagon’s recent achievements will get some dished assessments in the paragraphs below, but on August 15, Someone to Someone by his acoustic quartet PlainsPeak will see release on his own Irabbagast Records. A newly assembled group of old friends, PlainsPeak is inextricably rooted in Irabagon’s current Windy City digs.
To begin, ‘twas back in February that Server Farm, a beautiful monster of a record featuring music written by Jon Irabagon for a ten-piece band of the saxophonist’s choosing (Irabagon, violinist/vocalist Mazz Swift, trumpeter/flugelhornist Peter Evans, guitarists Miles Okazaki and Wendy Eisenberg, keyboardist Matt Mitchell, acoustic bassist Michael Formanek, electric bassist Chris Lightcap, drummer Dan Weiss and vibraphonist/electronics wrangler Levy Lorenzo), and more specifically a double quintet of sorts, was released, or better said, unleashed into the atmosphere.
Recorded March 12, 2023 in Big Orange Studio in Brooklyn, Server Farm is compositionally rich and ambitious and something of a breakout record for Irabagon on a compositional front, as it is also a conceptually daring rumination on the presence of AI in our individual and collective consciousness. At its sonic core Server Farm is a stunning blend of acoustic, electric, and electronic instrumentation enlivening compositions written with the assembled players in mind.
It’s followed by the as yet digital-only release of Axiom Five on May 1 of this year, although the two pieces that comprise the set were recorded on April 24 of 2024 at the performance venue The Stone in NYC by Irabagon, bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Barry Altschul (the Irabagon Trio), plus pianist Uri Caine and trombonist Ray Anderson. Across Axiom Five’s lengthy improvs (the first 37+ minutes, the second shorter but still sizable at 15+), the generational (OG New Thing meets Downtown NY meets contempo creative) and geographical (essentially Chicago meets NYC) potency is very satisfying.
Next, on May 26, came Two-Part Inventions, an also as yet digital-only set by the duo of Irabagon on tenor sax and Peter Brendler on acoustic bass tackling seven compositions by pianists, and namely Bill Evans, Victor Feldman, Thelonious Monk, George Shearing, Herbie Hancock, Duke Ellington and Elmo Hope. It was recorded in studio August 8 of 2024.
Never not lyrical inside the deep dimensions of this particularly fundamental strain of duo exchange, Two-Part Inventions is also a consistently robust affair that hits the ear like it could’ve been released at any time from the late 1970s (maybe by Soul Note/Black Saint) right up to this year. What this set lacks in daring, it makes up for in uncommonly vibrant transformations of Modern Jazz sensibilities with ties going back to the swing era and even the New Orleans roots.
This brings us very nicely up to Someone to Someone, which features Irabagon on alto sax with trumpeter Russ Johnson, bassist Clarke Sommers, and drummer Dana Hall. The vibe of the seven pieces is a bit more avant-edgy but ultimately still possesses a firm Modern Jazz compositional foundation that should please those with a preference for a sturdy structural framework.
The lack of piano can give off a few similarities to Atlantic Records-era Ornette Coleman, but these instances are very fleeting. Irabagon is speaking with his own compositional voice and the group extends the lack of indebtedness to the realm of execution.
Server Farm is deeply concerned with assessing the limitations of computer-based thought systems as Irabagon elevates the best in human musicality, Axiom Five is about the spark of the moment across a broad spectrum of human experience, and Two-Part Inventions contracts it to a sublime conversation on the 20th century’s greatest music, Someone to Someone is a firmly and thoroughly satisfying Chicago-themed affair that rounds out Irabagon’s recent excursions exceptionally well.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
Server Farm
A+
Axiom Five
A
Two-Part Inventions
A-
Someone to Someone
A
