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The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 2000, as 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 resisted being categorized and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment captivated the audience as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” 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’s round the corner – why should music be any different?”

He further explained that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals according to his personal standards. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic 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 released 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.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Many drummers tune their kit 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 apparently superhuman drive as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who also played 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 subsequently 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 Artistic Independence

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were melodically intricate and embodied a fusion vibe while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He included his own playing melodica, and his folky melodic inventions soared.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he performed on multiple instruments, and duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was minimalist and stripped-down in contrast to Untitled.

Landmark Collaborations and Key Albums

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 played their usual instruments while also doubling on keyboards and synthesisers, subsuming their own identities inside richly arranged compositions of natural themes. 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 elemental force unleashed by the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of 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 stake out its terrain, as atmospheric, gradual developments gradually telescoped towards rhythmic blows.

Philosophical Insights on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette all those years 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 sit in grooves and let them saturate me,” but also mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore beneficial for the mind. He cited the “predictable limits” 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 highly inventive yet often only access their potential during crises. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

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