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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. 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, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic thrilled me 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 melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “is linked to the very nature of our existence. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without transformation 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. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the traditional rules of percussion. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Musical Expression

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was uniquely personal. 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 also played on Davis’s epoch-defining Bitches Brew, had by 1970 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice 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, ample room to experiment, while DeJohnette filled his performance with complex percussive interjections – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 debut album, 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 wrote 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 took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he issued 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.

Iconic Partnerships and Essential Recordings

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 played their usual instruments while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, merging their personal styles 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 mirroring the elemental force 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 play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Art and Existence

Conversing with DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries made more sense. He told me how 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 unrestricted and therefore beneficial for the mind. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you embrace a complete spectrum of options. People are capable of highly inventive but only seem to tap into 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 heard his music as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists have to draw on that.”