Jack DeJohnette
b. 9 August 1942, Chicago, Illinois, USA. DeJohnette studied piano for 10 years, graduating from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He also played saxophone, but was inspired by the example of Max Roach to take up drums, which he played with the high school band. He would practise for four hours on drums and four on piano, and played in all sorts of situations, from free jazz to R&B. Finally settling on drums, in 1963 he became a member of Richard Muhal Abrams’ Experimental Band and was later involved with the AACM. In 1966 he played with John Coltrane during the interregnum between the departure of Elvin Jones and the final choice of Rashied Alias his replacement. In the same year he settled in New York, playing with Big John Patton, Jackie McLean, Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln. At the end of the year he joined the Charles Lloyd Quartet, where he stayed until 1969, but during that time he also gigged with Thelonious Monk, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and Stan Getz. In August 1969 he took part in sessions for Miles Davis's BITCHES BREW, and in April 1970 he formally joined Davis. After departing in mid-1971 he set up his own band, Compost. 
During the '70s he became virtually a session drummer for the ECM label, recording with Jan Garbarek, Kenny Wheeler and John Abercrombie among others. With Abercrombie and Dave Holland, he played in the occasional trio Gateway. In 1978 he formed and recorded with his New Directions band, which involved Abercrombie and Lester Bowie, and in 1980 formed the acclaimed Special Edition, whose varying personnel has featured David Murray, Chico Freeman and Arthur Blythe. In 1985, reverting temporarily to his earlier talent, he released a solo piano album. During the late '80s and early '90s DeJohnette has been part of Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio with Gary Peacock and has toured as a duo with John Surman, both of them doubling on keyboards and electronics. (He had earlier featured on Surman's 1981 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF SIMON SIMON.) He has also worked with Michael Brecker, Tommy Smith and with Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny on their SONG X collaboration. In some contexts, DeJohnette's approach to the rhythm can be so oblique that his grip on time can seem precarious, but this is deceptive. He is a powerfully propulsive percussionist with an exceptional sense of structure and texture, perhaps heard at its most exotic in his vivid splashes of colour with the Lloyd Quartet.