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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette had come to London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my opening inquiry as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette resisted being categorized and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic 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 told me, “is tied up in 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 further explained that every component of his percussion setup 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 could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship seemed to be on display continuously, until his passing at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Artistic Performance

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was uniquely personal. To hear him play 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 groundbreaking 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, all the space they needed to explore, while DeJohnette packed his playing with rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion 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 exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions 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 took flight.

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 duetted on some tracks 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 dealt up large-scale structures with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles reflecting the primal energy unleashed by 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 slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of pushing structural boundaries became clearer. He told me how he enjoyed performing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could immerse in rhythms and let them saturate me,” but also mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. 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 very creative but only seem to tap into their potential during crises. 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.”

No question that DeJohnette heard his music as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that cleansing, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”