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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette was visiting London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being pigeonholed and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette told me, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without transformation and we never know what lies ahead – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify that every component of his percussion setup he considered to be a musical being “in its own right.” He designed and tuned his cymbals to his own specification. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he noted. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was additionally a keyboardist of considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was uniquely personal. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to be amazed by seemingly boundless energy as he maintained an impactful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who additionally performed on Davis’s epoch-defining Bitches Brew, had by 1970 emerged as Davis’s preferred percussionist in a collision of brilliant artists. His drums rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and allowed Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a hectic quintet album, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was sparse and bare-bones in contrast to Untitled.

Landmark Collaborations and Key Albums

His 1981 ECM album with saxophonist John Surman, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, became a landmark moment for both musicians, and a much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of pastoral tones. Another essential album was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which dealt up large-scale structures with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles reflecting the elemental force expressed through the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, I was reminded of an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to establish its space, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. He told me how he loved playing those rhythmic patterns with Davis because “I could sit in grooves and allow them to envelop me,” but also mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always open-ended and therefore beneficial for the mind. He complained about the “safe confines” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you embrace a full range of possibilities. Individuals have the ability for highly inventive yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and put things back into it, we would have a better world and community.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette viewed his art as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists have to draw on that.”