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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 categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment 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 harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “is linked to the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without transformation and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify that each part of his drum kit he considered to be a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals to his own specification. 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 were never limited by the traditional rules of percussion. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who issued 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 Artistic Performance

Many drummers tune their kit to a custom setup, 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 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 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, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – 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 exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing melodica, and his rustic tune creations took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a hectic quintet album, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was minimalist and stripped-down in contrast to Untitled.

Iconic Partnerships 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 highly regarded work 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 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 expressed through the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, I was reminded of an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band 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.

Philosophical Insights on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. 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 create broader auditory landscapes, always open-ended and therefore beneficial for the mind. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of 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, ceased harming the planet and put things back into it, we would have a better world and community.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette heard his music as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that purification, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”