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The interview 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 opening inquiry as a “drummer” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette resisted being pigeonholed and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, attending a performance at 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 powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette explained, “is tied up in the very nature of our existence. 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 considered to be a musical being “in its own right.” He designed and tuned 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 sounds inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of significant talent – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident continuously, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Artistic Performance

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force 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 additionally performed 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 allowed Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a voice deeply linked with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The pieces DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing a wind instrument, and his folky melodic inventions took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he was signed to 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 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 highly regarded work too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside richly arranged compositions of natural themes. A further critical record 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 elemental force expressed through the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of an earlier encounter 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 rhythmic blows.

Reflective Thoughts 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 allow them to envelop me,” but also spoke of his desire to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of highly inventive 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.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that purification, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists have to draw on that.”