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My conversation 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 pigeonholed 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 captivated the audience as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a complex percussion display as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette explained, “is tied up in the very essence of being. 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 “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 added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was also a pianist of significant talent – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect 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 adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, 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 be amazed by seemingly boundless energy as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who also played 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 subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a voice intimately connected with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were melodically intricate and embodied a fusion vibe while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a hectic quintet album, but also Pictures in which he performed on multiple instruments, 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 played their usual instruments while also adding electronic elements, subsuming their own identities inside richly arranged compositions 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 reflecting the elemental force unleashed by the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of an previous experience 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.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries 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 mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He complained about the “safe confines” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of very creative yet often only access their potential during crises. But if people were more conscious of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette heard his music as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists have to draw on that.”