supersigil: Oneness by Jack DeJohnette

My deep dive into Miles Davis's electric period last year made me aware of just how vital a force Jack DeJohnette is on the drums. He played a pivotal role in the evolution of what would become known as jazz-rock, picking up the baton from Tony Williams (whom he replaced in Miles's band) and delivering it to an entire younger generation of drummers fusing jazz rhythms with rock energy. Outside of recordings with Miles, I only really knew DeJohnette as a member of Charles Lloyd's pioneering 60s quartet, and then as a sideman with pretty much all the great post-Coltrane jazz musicians (see my log of the recently released 1966 recording with a McCoy Tyner / Joe Henderson quartet Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs). I have the 1975 album Gateway, by a collaborative trio he co-led with John Abercrombie and Dave Holland. But I'd somehow never gotten round to checking out DeJohnette's output as a solo artist and bandleader. I'm rectifying that now. While Special Edition and New Directions are probably the drummer's best-known groups, this 1997 release features an intriguing quartet made up of bassist/guitarist Jerome Harris, percussionist Don Alias, and pianist Michael Cain. It's spacious, exploratory music whose episodic forms provoke a sense of wide-open possibility.

Oneness

10/1/1997