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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. This occurred during the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette had come to London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my initial question as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being pigeonholed and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of pure enchantment captivated the audience as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a complex percussion display as harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t expect our life to evolve 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 viewed as a musical being “with its own identity.” He designed and tuned his cymbals according to his personal standards. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was additionally a keyboardist of significant talent – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship seemed to be on display all of the time, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Artistic Performance

Numerous percussionists adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was uniquely personal. Listening to his performance on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to be amazed by seemingly boundless energy 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 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice in a meeting of mighty musical minds. His drums anchored the track firmly and allowed Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a voice intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were melodically intricate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into 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, 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.

Iconic Partnerships and Essential Recordings

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 played their usual instruments while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, subsuming their own identities inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of natural themes. A further critical record 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 mirroring the elemental force unleashed by 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 perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to stake out its terrain, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Philosophical Insights on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. He explained that he loved playing those rhythmic patterns with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and allow them to envelop me,” but also spoke of his desire to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He complained about the “safe confines” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you embrace a complete spectrum of options. Individuals have the ability for very creative but only seem to tap into their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and put things back into it, we would have a better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette heard his music as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists must tap into that source.”