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The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette had come to 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 categorized and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall observing 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 propelled the sound with a labyrinthian drum solo as harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The idea of improvisation,” DeJohnette explained, “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 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 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 additionally a keyboardist of significant talent – 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 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 marvel at seemingly boundless energy as he sustained a powerful 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 collision of brilliant artists. His drums anchored the track firmly and allowed Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a voice intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also occasionally leaning towards 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 was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a hectic quintet album, but also Pictures in which he performed on multiple instruments, and collaborated on several pieces 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 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 mirroring the elemental force expressed through the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, it recalled an previous experience with DeJohnette, when I heard his group 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.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries made more sense. He told me how he enjoyed performing 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 beneficial for the mind. He cited the “safe confines” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you embrace a complete spectrum of options. People are capable of highly inventive yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. 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 viewed his art as reflecting those utopian goals. “Art is the spiritual equivalent of that purification, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists have to draw on that.”