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The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. This occurred during the summer of 2000, when 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 pigeonholed and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic captivated the audience as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette told me, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without transformation and we never know what lies ahead – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “with its own identity.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals to his own specification. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “you think harmonically on the kit,” he added. The sounds inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the traditional rules of percussion. He was additionally a keyboardist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship seemed to be on display continuously, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Musical Expression

Numerous percussionists tune their kit to a custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was entirely his own. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to marvel at apparently superhuman drive as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who additionally performed on Davis’s groundbreaking 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 later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with rattling rhythmic asides – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, 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 remained doggedly independent. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were melodically intricate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing melodica, and his rustic tune creations soared.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex 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 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 performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of pastoral tones. 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 heard his group Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to stake out its terrain, as ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. He told me how he loved playing 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 healthy for the brain. He cited 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 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 purification, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists must tap into that source.”