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Jack DeJohnette featuring Bill Frisell: The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers
by AAJ Staff
Drummer Jack DeJohnette, now four releases down the road with his Golden Beams label, turns to the archives for this historic live set with Bill Frisell. The guitarist first heard DeJohnette's music as a teenager in the '60s, though it took some time before they would first perform together on Don Byron's Romance with the Unseen (Blue Note, 1999). They embrace a shared musical vision with one ear to the ground, digging the groove, and the other wide open to ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette: Music We Are
by John Kelman
Since the inception of his Golden Beams Productions imprint, Jack DeJohnette has been busy releasing music ranging from the meditational Music in the Key of Ohm (Golden Beams, 2005) and world music-inflected Music from the Hearts of the Masters (Golden Beams, 2005) to the more decidedly improvisational The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers (Golden Beams, 2006). A freedom of spirit infuses all his releases, but it's been over a decade since the veteran drummer has released an album as a ...
Continue ReadingThe Jack DeJohnette Group: Live at Yoshi's 2010
by John Kelman
In the text file accompanying his digital download-only Live at Yoshi's 2010, Jack DeJohnette is quoted, ..."Each piece is different every time we play it." Fans of this veteran drummer--for whom a precise count of all the artists he's worked with (let alone all the recordings he's appeared on) would be an exercise in futility--would have to agree. DeJohnette's quintet-- which made a stop at the well-known Oakland club during a summer tour in 2010--opens with a 21-minute version of ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette: Sound Travels
by John Kelman
Turning 70 and being awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship would be enough to make 2012 a special year for Jack DeJohnette, but Sound Travels transcends mere celebration of the veteran drummer/pianist/bandleader's broad swath of accomplishments since emerging, in the mid-1960s, with saxophonist Charles Lloyd's massively successful quartet. His first album to equitably balance piano and drums--including the meditative “Enter Here" and South African/gospel-tinged “Home," solo piano pieces which bookend the set, DeJohnette ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette: Time and Space
by John Kelman
It begins with the sound of a resonating bell, followed by a gently cascading piano solo that gradually assumes shape and form, hovering around two chords and creating an inviting ambiance that resolves with another ringing of the bell, segueing gently into the groove-heavy “Salsa for Luisito." The track is “Enter Here," and the album is Sound Travels (Golden Beams/eOne, 2012), Jack DeJohnette's first hard CD as a leader since 2009's Music We Are, also on the drummer's Golden Beams ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette - John Patitucci - Danilo Perez: Music We Are
by AAJ Italy Staff
Non sempre l'unione di grandi musicisti restituisce un suono d'insieme in grado di andare oltre le singole capacità. Fa eccezione Music We Are, un disco nel quale dall'incontro di tre giganti come Jack DeJohnette, Danilo Perez e John Patitucci, scaturiscono una serie di brani dove l'amalgama del trio esalta, e innalza, le caratteristiche di ognuno, come in un riuscito gioco d'incastri. E bastano veramente pochi ascolti per apprezzare il lavoro svolto dai tre, che fin dall'iniziale “Tango African" - brano ...
Continue ReadingJohn Surman: Brewster's Rooster
by Jeff Stockton
Over 150 years experience! That's how the band saxophonist John Surman assembled for Brewster's Rooster could be advertised. Surman first played with drummer Jack DeJohnette in the late '70s and DeJohnette and guitarist John Abercrombie first worked together earlier that decade. Rounded out by bassist Drew Gress, Surman revisits straight-ahead jazz after essaying an eclectic range of recordings. On “Hilltop Dancer," Surman's tone on baritoneis solid and assured, never tempted by the extremes available on the big horn and Abercrombie's ...
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