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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. This occurred during the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette resisted being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic captivated the audience as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette told me, “is tied up in the very essence of being. 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 considered to be a musical being “with its own identity.” 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 could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was additionally a keyboardist of significant talent – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship was consistently evident continuously, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a custom setup, 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 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 emerged as Davis’s preferred percussionist 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 explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with rattling rhythmic asides – 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 rapidly diversifying around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The compositions DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions 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 duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was minimalist and stripped-down in contrast to Untitled.

Landmark Collaborations and Key Albums

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 adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes 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 reflecting 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 perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to establish its space, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Philosophical Insights on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He told me how he enjoyed performing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and let them saturate me,” but also spoke of his desire to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you embrace a complete spectrum of options. Individuals have the ability for very creative but only seem to tap into their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more conscious 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 cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists have to draw on that.”