JACK DEJOHNETTE

Born: Chicago, Illinois, 9 August 1942

Genre: Jazz

Best-selling album since 1990: Parallel Realities (1998)

Jack DeJohnette is among the most supple, powerful, broadly experienced, and subtle jazz drummers of the past three decades. He is an imaginative bandleader and an anchor for improvisers such as the pianist Keith Jarrett, whom he met when they were both in the Charles Lloyd Quartet from 1966 to 1968 and in whose long-running trio he remains a key member.

DeJohnette was encouraged in his childhood musical interests by his uncle, Roy L. Wood Sr., a popular jazz DJ who later became vice president of the National Network of Black Broadcasters. DeJohnette began piano lessons at age four. He studied classical music for ten years but switched to jazz as a teenager, playing in blues and rock and roll bands while falling under the influence of the pianist Ahmad Jamal. He started playing drums at age eighteen and met musicians with avant-garde interests who later formed the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an artists' collective. He also sat in with John Coltrane in Chicago before moving to New York City in 1966.

DeJohnette found more work in New York as a drummer than as a pianist, employed by vocalist Abbey Lincoln, saxophonists Jackie McLean and Charles Lloyd, and pianist Bill Evans, with whom he toured Great Britain. He also worked with saxophonist Stan Getz, and he replaced drummer Tony Williams in Miles Davis's band in 1969, in time to record Davis's groundbreaking double album Bitches Brew, which set the direction for jazz-rock-fusion efforts to come. In Davis's group he played with pianists Jarrett and Herbie Hancock, and bassist Dave Holland. He recorded The DeJohnette Complex (1969) with his drum mentor Roy Haynes and formed Compost, a jazz-rock band in which he played keyboards with Don Alias as a drummer/percussionist. After considerable freelancing, including the recording of Ruta and Daitya (1973), his first album with Keith Jarrett on the ECM label, DeJohnette established the trio Gateway in 1976 with Holland and guitarist John Abercrombie.

DeJohnette has often used his bands—including Directions, formed in 1976, New Directions (1978–1979), and Special Edition—as incubators for new talents, collaborating with trumpeter Lester Bowie; saxophonists David Murray, Arthur Blythe, Gary Thomas, and Greg Osby; and pianists John Hicks and Michael Cain, among others. DeJohnette has been lauded for his compositions for these bands, including lyrical melodies such as "Silver Hollow," "Where or Wayne," "New Orleans Strut," and "Zoot Suite."

DeJohnette has recorded with so many different leaders of ECM sessions that he is considered the label's house drummer; he has worked constantly in Keith Jarrett's trio (with the bassist Gary Peacock) since 1985. He recorded The Jack DeJohnette Piano Album (1985), which was well received but has not generated a sequel. He toured with Hancock, Holland, and Pat Metheny in 1990 (the group plans to re-form in 2004) and singer Betty Carter (resulting in the live album Feed the Fire [1993]), and he helped introduce Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba to audiences in the United States (The Blessing [1991]).

Since 1990 DeJohnette has focused on earth studies, ecology, and cultural preservation with his album Music for the Fifth World (1992), featuring guitarists Vernon Reid and John Scofield and Native American singers; his meditative releases Dancing with Nature Spirits (1995) and Oneness (1996); his duets with British reeds virtuoso John Surman in Invisible Nature (2002); and participation in Surman's composition for reeds, strings, pianos, and drums, Free and Equal (2003). In the summer of 2003 DeJohnette led ensembles in a partial career retrospective over four nights at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

DeJohnette has never won a Grammy Award, but he has been honored innumerable times in Down Beat magazine polls, and he is revered by Japanese audiences. Heir to Roy Haynes, Max Roach, and Elvin Jones, DeJohnette is the preeminent living jazz drummer of his generation.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

The DeJohnette Complex (Milestone, 1969); Ruta and Daitya (ECM, 1973); Cosmic Chicken (Prestige, 1975); New Directions (ECM, 1978); Tin Can Alley (ECM, 1980); Album, Album (ECM, 1984); The Jack DeJohnette Piano Album (Landmark, 1985); Earthwalk (Blue Note, 1991); Music for the Fifth World (Manhattan, 1992); Extra Special Edition (Blue Note, 1994); Dancing with Nature Spirits (ECM, 1995); Oneness (ECM, 1996); Parallel Realities (Universal/GRP, 1998); Invisible Nature (ECM, 2002); Free and Equal (ECM, 2003).

WEBSITE:

www.JackDeJohnette.com.

howard mandel