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The interview with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my initial question as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette resisted being pigeonholed and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett sustained 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 concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “is linked to the very nature of our existence. We don’t expect our life to evolve without changing and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify 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. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he noted. The sounds inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist 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, before his death at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Artistic Performance

Numerous percussionists tune their kit to a bespoke design, 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 be amazed by seemingly boundless energy as he maintained an impactful 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 meeting of mighty musical minds. His drums anchored the track firmly and allowed Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to experiment, 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 voice deeply linked with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The pieces DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing a wind instrument, and his folky melodic inventions took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, following his departure from Davis’s group, 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 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, merging their personal styles 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 reflecting the primal energy unleashed by the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, it recalled an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I heard his group Special Edition perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Conversing with 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 immerse in rhythms and allow them to envelop me,” but also mentioned his aim to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always open-ended and therefore healthy for the brain. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you embrace a full range of possibilities. Individuals have the ability for highly inventive 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, ceased harming the planet and put things back into it, we would have a better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists have to draw on that.”