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My conversation with Jack DeJohnette didn’t begin smoothly. 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 initial question as a “drummer” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette resisted being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of pure enchantment captivated the audience as Jarrett held a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette propelled the sound 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 nature of our existence. 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 “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. 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 considerable merit – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Musical Expression

Many drummers adjust their equipment to a custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was uniquely personal. Listening to his performance on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to marvel at 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 emerged as Davis’s preferred percussionist in a collision of brilliant artists. His drums anchored the track firmly and gave Davis, and later saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room 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 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 compositions 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 melodica, and his rustic tune creations soared.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he joined 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 Key Albums

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. Another essential album was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which presented expansive forms with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles reflecting the elemental force unleashed by the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, it recalled an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to establish its space, 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 explained that he loved playing those funk figurations 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 unrestricted and therefore beneficial for the mind. He cited the “safe confines” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of very creative yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more conscious 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 have to draw on that.”