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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette was visiting London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic captivated the audience as Jarrett sustained 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. Complete musician indeed.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette explained, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without changing 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 viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals to his own specification. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship seemed to be on display all of the time, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was entirely his own. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to marvel at apparently superhuman drive 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 meeting of mighty musical minds. His drums anchored the track firmly and gave Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance 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 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 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 truly multifaceted and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he issued 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 sparse and bare-bones in contrast to Untitled.

Landmark Collaborations 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 much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, subsuming their own identities inside richly arranged compositions of pastoral tones. Another essential album 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 unleashed by the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of 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 ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. He explained that he loved playing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and allow them to envelop me,” but also spoke of his desire to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always unrestricted 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 complete spectrum of options. People are capable of 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, ceased harming the planet and restored balance, we would have a better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that purification, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”