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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without transformation and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify that each part of his drum kit he considered to be a musical being “with its own identity.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically on the kit,” he noted. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident continuously, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Artistic Performance

Numerous percussionists adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was uniquely personal. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to marvel at apparently superhuman drive as he sustained a powerful 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 gave Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to experiment, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a style deeply linked with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing a wind instrument, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he performed on multiple instruments, and collaborated on several pieces 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, emerged as a pivotal point for both musicians, and a highly regarded work too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, subsuming their own identities inside richly arranged compositions of natural themes. A further critical record was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which presented expansive forms with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles reflecting the elemental force unleashed by the music. Hearing that work 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 took its time to stake out its terrain, as ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards rhythmic blows.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Conversing with DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He told me how he loved playing those rhythmic patterns with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and let them saturate me,” but also mentioned his aim to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always open-ended and therefore healthy for the brain. He cited the “safe confines” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you embrace a complete spectrum of options. People are capable of highly inventive yet often only access their potential during crises. But if people were more conscious of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

No question that DeJohnette heard his music as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that cleansing, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists must tap into that source.”