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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. This occurred during the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette had come to London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my initial question as a “drummer” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, an instance 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 labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette explained, “is linked to 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 further explained that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He designed and tuned 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 added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was additionally a keyboardist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident continuously, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Many drummers tune their kit to a custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was entirely his own. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to be amazed by apparently superhuman drive as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who also played on Davis’s groundbreaking Bitches Brew, had by 1970 emerged as Davis’s preferred percussionist in a meeting of mighty musical minds. His drums rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and allowed Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a style intimately connected 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 rustic tune creations took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, 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.

Landmark Collaborations 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 much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, 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 expressed through the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, it recalled 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 establish its space, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. 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 mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always open-ended and therefore beneficial for the mind. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of very creative 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 restored balance, we would have a better world and community.”

Undoubtedly 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.”