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The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. This occurred during the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my initial question as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being pigeonholed and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a complex percussion display as harmonically searching 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 changing and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?”

He further explained 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 “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he noted. The sounds inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was additionally a keyboardist of considerable merit – 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.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Many drummers tune their kit to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality 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 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 rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and gave Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to experiment, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – maintaining an ongoing dialogue 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 rapidly diversifying around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing a wind instrument, and his rustic tune creations soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, after leaving Davis, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he issued 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 minimalist and stripped-down in contrast to Untitled.

Iconic Partnerships and Essential Recordings

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. Another essential album was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which presented expansive forms 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 previous experience 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

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. He told me how he loved playing those funk figurations 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 unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you embrace a full range of possibilities. People are capable of 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 restored balance, we would have a better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that purification, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”