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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was 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 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 pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a labyrinthian drum solo as harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The idea of improvisation,” 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 each part of his drum kit he considered to be a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was additionally a keyboardist of considerable merit – who released 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 uniquely personal. To hear him play 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 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 rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and gave Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a voice deeply linked with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette wrote for his album were melodically intricate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own 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 joined ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was sparse and bare-bones 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 richly arranged compositions of natural themes. 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 primal energy unleashed by the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, I was reminded of 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 ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. He told me how 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 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 embrace a full range of possibilities. Individuals have the ability for very creative yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more conscious of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

No question that DeJohnette heard his music as reflecting those utopian goals. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”