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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. This occurred during the summer of 2000, as DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” felt appropriate, 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 observing 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 powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” 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 further explained that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “with its own identity.” 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 sounds inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship seemed to be on display 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 uniquely personal. Listening to his performance on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to marvel at apparently superhuman drive as he maintained an impactful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who also played on Davis’s groundbreaking 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 allowed Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Creative Autonomy

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 created for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he released 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 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 adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes 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 reflecting the elemental force unleashed by the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, it recalled an previous experience with DeJohnette, when I heard his group Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to stake out its terrain, as atmospheric, gradual developments gradually telescoped towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He explained that he enjoyed performing those rhythmic patterns 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 open-ended and therefore healthy for the brain. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a complete spectrum of options. 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, stopped abusing the Earth and put things back into it, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

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