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The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. 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” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette resisted being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall observing 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 idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette told me, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without changing 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 “with its own identity.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically 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 significant talent – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, until his passing at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Artistic Performance

Many drummers tune their kit 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 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 emerged as Davis’s preferred percussionist in a meeting of mighty musical minds. His drums rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and allowed Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 debut album, 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 created for his album were melodically intricate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing a wind instrument, and his rustic tune creations took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he issued Untitled, a hectic quintet album, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and collaborated on several pieces 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 highly regarded work too. Surman and DeJohnette played their usual instruments while also adding electronic elements, subsuming their own identities inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of pastoral tones. 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 primal energy expressed through the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I heard his group Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to stake out its terrain, as ambient, slow-burn forms slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette much 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 sit in grooves and allow them to envelop me,” but also mentioned his aim to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, 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’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of highly inventive yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more conscious 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. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”