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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. This occurred during the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette had come to London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being pigeonholed and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall observing 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 complex percussion display as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette told me, “is linked to the very nature of our existence. We don’t expect our life to evolve without changing and we never know what lies ahead – why should music be any different?”

He further explained that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals to his own specification. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he noted. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the traditional rules of percussion. 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 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 custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was entirely his own. Listening to his performance 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 additionally performed on Davis’s groundbreaking Bitches Brew, had by 1970 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice 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 rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The compositions DeJohnette wrote for his album were melodically intricate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing a wind instrument, and his folky melodic inventions took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted 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, 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 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 expressed through the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, it recalled an previous experience with DeJohnette, when I heard his group Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards rhythmic blows.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He explained that he enjoyed performing those rhythmic patterns with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and allow them to envelop me,” but also mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always open-ended and therefore beneficial for the mind. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you’re open to a complete spectrum of options. Individuals have the ability for very creative yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette viewed his art as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that purification, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”