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The interview with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my initial question as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette resisted being categorized and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic thrilled me as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of repeated notes 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 concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette told me, “is linked to 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 further explained that every component of his percussion setup he viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship seemed to be on display all of the time, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Musical Expression

Numerous percussionists tune their kit 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 marvel at apparently superhuman drive 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 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice in a collision of brilliant artists. His drums anchored the track firmly and gave Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with complex percussive interjections – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he issued Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and collaborated on several pieces with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was minimalist and stripped-down in contrast to Untitled.

Iconic Partnerships 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 highly regarded work too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, subsuming their own identities inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of pastoral tones. 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 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 play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms slowly condensed towards rhythmic blows.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries made more sense. He told me how he enjoyed performing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and let them saturate me,” but also spoke of his desire to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always open-ended and therefore healthy for the brain. He complained about the “safe confines” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “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 during crises. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and restored balance, we would have a better world and community.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette viewed his art as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”