In improvisational music, ungoverned by conductors or sacrosanct scores, and given to abrupt shifts of direction on the whims of performers, drummers are often the intuitive navigators. One of the most creative and viscerally thrilling exponents of that pivotal jazz art was Jack DeJohnette, the percussionist, pianist, composer and bandleader, who has died aged 83.
DeJohnette’s CV glitters with the names of the biggest jazz stars of the second half of the 20th century, and with good reason. In his youth, he played genres from R&B to free-jazz in his hometown, Chicago (alongside some of the innovative founders of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians – AACM – and occasionally playing in Sun Ra’s Arkestra), before joining the most widely celebrated of early jazz-rock fusion groups, led by the saxophonist Charles Lloyd and including a then-unknown young pianist called Keith Jarrett.
