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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. This occurred during the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my initial question as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being categorized and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a complex percussion display as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “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 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 to his own specification. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically on the kit,” he noted. The sounds inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was additionally a keyboardist of significant talent – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident continuously, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Artistic Performance

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a custom setup, 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 marvel at seemingly boundless energy as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who also played on Davis’s groundbreaking 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 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.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a style deeply linked with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing a wind instrument, and his rustic tune creations soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he was signed to 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 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, emerged as a pivotal point for both musicians, and a much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette played their usual instruments while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes 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 expressed through the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, it recalled an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to stake out its terrain, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. He told me how he loved playing 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 cited the “safe confines” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. 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, 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. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that cleansing, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists have to draw on that.”