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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. 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 shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment captivated the audience as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

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

He went on to clarify that every component of his percussion setup he viewed as a musical being “with its own identity.” He designed and tuned his cymbals to his own specification. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet 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 adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, 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 be amazed by apparently superhuman drive as he maintained an impactful 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 collision of brilliant artists. His drums rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and allowed Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to experiment, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He included his own playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, after leaving Davis, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and collaborated on several pieces with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was sparse and bare-bones 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 performed on their primary tools while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, subsuming their own identities inside richly arranged compositions of natural themes. 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. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of an previous experience 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 gradually telescoped towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He explained that he enjoyed performing 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 open-ended and therefore beneficial for the mind. He complained about the “safe confines” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you embrace a full range of possibilities. People are capable of very creative yet often only access their potential during crises. 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 better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette heard his music as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that cleansing, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists must tap into that source.”