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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London to perform with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being categorized and shot back instantly: “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 captivated the audience as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a complex percussion display 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 expect our life to evolve 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 designed and tuned 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 auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head were never limited by the conventions of drum technique. He was additionally a keyboardist of significant talent – who issued 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 tune their kit 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 seemingly boundless energy 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 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, ample room to experiment, while DeJohnette packed his playing with complex percussive interjections – maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a style deeply linked with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The pieces DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing a wind instrument, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted 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.

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 doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of natural themes. A further critical record was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which presented expansive forms with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles mirroring the primal energy expressed through the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, it recalled an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I heard his group Special Edition perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance took its time to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms slowly condensed towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Music and Life

Conversing with DeJohnette much later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He explained that 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 “safe confines” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of very creative but only seem to tap into their potential during crises. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and restored balance, we would have a better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art 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.”