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The interview with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. This occurred during the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London to perform 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.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, a moment 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 complex percussion display as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette told me, “is tied up in the very nature of our existence. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without changing and we never know what lies ahead – why should music be any different?”

He further explained that every component of his percussion setup he considered to be a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he noted. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, before his death at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Artistic Performance

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was entirely his own. Listening to his performance 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 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 gave Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to experiment, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – 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 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 embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted 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 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, became a landmark moment for both musicians, and a much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, subsuming their own identities inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of pastoral tones. A further critical record 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. 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 was in no hurry to stake out its terrain, as atmospheric, gradual developments slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. He explained that he loved playing those rhythmic patterns with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and allow them to envelop me,” but also mentioned his aim to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you’re open to a complete spectrum of options. People are capable of very creative yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and put things back into it, we would have a better world and community.”

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 have to draw on that.”