It very well could be the gig (my memory is not what it used to be). I do recall that it was a snowy evening with light attendance. The Main Point has some information about their shows, but I couldn’t find anything about the New Diections show. I know Dave Holland was not on bass, but I couldn’t recall the rest of the band. We lived a couple blocks away so saw a lot of great shows: Woody Shaw, Mose Allison, Doc Watson, John Hartford, Firesign Theatre (shoes for industry!), to name a few.
Thanks for this interesting post. Like many of the commenters I was initially blown away by Gateway, Directions, New Directions, and Special Edition. Saw several (Special) Editions live in Chicago and was always blown away. Years later in Hollywood Florida of all places, my wife and I stumbled upon a DeJohnette solo concert at an arts center. One piece each on piano and congas, two long drum solo pieces. I’ve literally never heard anything like those two drum solos. One lyrical, the other all fire. Thank you Jack, for fifty years of great music all over the aesthetic map.
Friday February 10, 1978. The Main Point. Late set. Jack DeJohnette, John Abercrombie, Lester Bowie, George Mraz. New Directions. No more than 25 people in the audience. The adverts for the hit noted only John Abercrombie/Jack DeJohnette so I went in expecting to hear Timeless/Gateway. MIND BLOWN. And one of the most explosive sets I've ever witnessed and still one of the best music experiences of my life. When the first New Directions record (tracked in Europe months later and with Eddie Gomez) was released I was surprised how relatively subdued it was compared to the live performance I remembered. A year or so later New Directions came through town again, this time at Starr's on Bainbridge. The now famous restaurateur and club namesake Steven Starr begged me to leave before admitting the audience for the sold out second set and I politely declined. I've seen Jack in many settings and combos in the years that followed but I always referenced that cold night in Bryn Mawr.
Gateway and then Timeless were my gateways into Jack DeJohnette. At the Gateway concert at the Michigan Theater in Detroit he played the most astonishing drum solo I've ever heard, beginning softly on the cymbals and building over six (probably) minutes to an absolute explosion of sound and rhythm. At the end of the show, for some reason as John Abercrombie left the stage, he flipped the bird to the, by then, wildly clapping audience, and we never got our encore.
I was looking forward to your comments regarding Jack and your tribute was a joy to read, as I did several times. I became a jazz lover in the early 70s, walking through the doors thrown wide open by fusion when I was a prog-rock loving 12-year-old. I was lucky enough to have music loving hippie neighbors that my parents approved of and a couple of like-minded older relatives that also had my parents' only slightly conditional seal of approval. From them I learned to love not just Mahavishnu and RTF, but I learned where those musics came from via Miles, etc. Then perhaps being a little bombastic myself, I uncharacteristically found myself turning away from the occasional bombast of blues and rock heavy fusion and found myself reveling in most of the more subtle fare on offer from the then young ECM, much of it with many of the same musicians that I was already admiring from fusion and it's historical roots. And though my musical interests are wide ranging, I'll unashamedly admit to being a full-on ECM fetishist to this day. I'm ALL there for the "chamber" in my jazz. I revere Manfred's apparent ability to get artists that are seemingly at risk of excessiveness in any particular pursuit to "calm the fuck down" while supporting the courage it takes for an artist to simply be beautiful. And I'm saying this on a day when I've been binging Cecil instead of John and Lester instead of David. Apologies for the ramble, but where I was going with this was that through all of it Jack was always there, sounding unmistakably like himself but also fitting like a glove into every setting and making that setting fabulously better than it would have been without him. So many talk about individuals crossing real and/or imagined borders, be they aesthetic, artistic, musical, political, racial, whatever. But Jack did it with such skill and grace that it was always the non-event that it should've been. The now and it's history, like Jack himself simply was. It's not a cliché to say that he was a welcome ever-presence in the soundtrack of my life. This one is going to take some time to work through. Thanks for making the process easier. And thanks for alerting me to some of his recorded music that I wasn't aware of.
Since it was released in 1982, I have loved the tune "Mys-story" from Chico Freeman's "Tradition in Transition," with a powerful Jack D. contribution. On this record, Jack also plays Monk-homage piano on the cover of "Jackie-ing."
Yes exactly. I also saw the DeJohnette drum solo clinic. Now THAT was amazing. Other memories of the weekend: I believe the big band concert was the last time Mel Lewis played the drums in public; Kenny Werner offered a gorgeous intro to “A Child is Born.” And down the street I saw Cedar Walton play with Don Menza. The student ensemble I was in included Chris Dave on drums.
I started listening to Jack when I was 15 years old. I got interested in jazz partially through my Uncle (Mat Marucci; who is an excellent drummer in his own rite) when he told me that his favorite drummers were Elvin, Jack and Tony so I bought Keith Jarrett Trio – Changes on cassette tape.
I loved the unique sound and clarity of Jack’s ride cymbal on the first cut Flying Pt 1 and I’ve been hooked on the trio ever since…seeking out everything they produced on ECM and everything I can find that’s been recorded on FM radio in Europe or any bootleg with decent sound I can get my hands on. The range of perfectly recorded unrehearsed live dates that these musicians have released has given me such happiness for the past 40 years… from the very simply stated to the most complex, out and intricate… to me very few bands come close to the level that they seemed to get to every time they played together. What an inspiration. And as to a recorded history of 3 legendary virtuoso musicians – I don’t think there is much else out there like it.
I’m sad to hear that Jack’s not with us anymore. I just hope that ECM still plans on releasing many the Trio’s unreleased concerts and his unreleased music to get me through the next 40 years or however long I last on this earth
I saw Jack DeJohnette with John Abercrombie and likely Alex Foster and Peter Warren at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr. It was a snowy night in January 1978 and due to the weather, there was a small crowd so we had front row streets. I used to play Jack’s album, Sorcery, with Abercrombie and Bennie Maupin and my wife couldn’t listen to it, too much going on. But seeing Jack perform live won her over, just watching him move was astonishing for both of us. Seeming effortless, he guided the band through one of the most intense shows I’ve witnessed.
Jack DeJohnette's New Directions (with George Mraz in place of Eddie Gomez) played The Main Point on February 10, 1978. I was at the late set and recall there being less than 25 people in the room. They performed as if there were a thousand in the audience. And did an encore, but not Back Woods Song that I called out. (Jack: "that's a different band.") While I was paying the doorman my $6 or whatever, Jack was hassling said doorman, "I need the bread." I wonder if that is the gig you reference above?
I've been immersed in DeJohnette's recordings since I heard the news from you this morning. So sad to lose a true great. All my albums are on iTunes, and I discovered I have 170 albums featuring his drumming! Man, what a legacy. My favorites are too numerous to mention, but the M.F. played on Bitches Brew, which I bought at 18 years old in 1970. So that's 55 years of listening to Jack. My favorite album may have been Hudson, and I was disappointed there wasn't a follow-up. I'm going to check out the few albums I don't own yet. Thanks for letting us know, Ethan.
Jack meant so much to me. So many shows from 1976 to 2019.
Top 3 live sets:
1-1976 Alex Foster bass Holland. 100 seats in Philly Burns. He gave me his sticks after 2nd set!!
2-Jack 2005 with Latin percussion Ensemble. UofP Philly. Never knew he was so fluid in Latin clave! INCREDIBLE 😲
3- Montreux fest 2000. Of course Jarrett made the band walk off until sound man (& anyone breathing!) Were fixed & quiet! Jack re-ignited the trio when they returned to stage.
Are you familiar with 'To Hear Is To See', by the somewhat obscure but very good saxophonist, Eric Kloss Ethan? From 1969 and it has the full Miles rhythm section of Chick, Dave and Jack, and there are two odd metre pieces on it, one in 7 and one in 5. It's the only example I know of hearing Chick play in odd metres in the swing, or swing related idioms. They play with the same fire and bravado they did with Miles, it's a very fine record, even if the piano is a bit beaten up. Regarding Triplicate, I have a bootleg live concert that Steve gave me - amazing, it's like Triplicate on steroids!
I too have a great Triplicate bootleg somewhere that never got digitized. I have never heard the Kloss, had no idea they played in odd meter then. Thanks Ronan!
Another interesting side note about this album is that Kloss is blind and is only 20 years old on this recording - imagine at that age having the confidence to write an album of originals for these guys to play!
DeJohnette makes an occasional appearance in George Lewis's great book about the AACM, A POWER STRONGER THAN ITSELF; e.g., "Friday afternoons were devoted to rehearsals that brought Wilson students [from Chicago's Woodrow Wilson Junior College, including Malachi Favors, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill] together with the cream of Chicago’s musicians. Present at these events were people like Eddie Harris, Charles Stepney, drummers Steve McCall and Jack DeJohnette, bassists Betty Dupree and Jimmy Willis, pianist Andrew Hill, and several musicians who had been part of the Sun Ra Arkestra, including trumpeter Hobart Dotson and percussionists Richard Evans and Jim Herndon."
It very well could be the gig (my memory is not what it used to be). I do recall that it was a snowy evening with light attendance. The Main Point has some information about their shows, but I couldn’t find anything about the New Diections show. I know Dave Holland was not on bass, but I couldn’t recall the rest of the band. We lived a couple blocks away so saw a lot of great shows: Woody Shaw, Mose Allison, Doc Watson, John Hartford, Firesign Theatre (shoes for industry!), to name a few.
Thanks for this interesting post. Like many of the commenters I was initially blown away by Gateway, Directions, New Directions, and Special Edition. Saw several (Special) Editions live in Chicago and was always blown away. Years later in Hollywood Florida of all places, my wife and I stumbled upon a DeJohnette solo concert at an arts center. One piece each on piano and congas, two long drum solo pieces. I’ve literally never heard anything like those two drum solos. One lyrical, the other all fire. Thank you Jack, for fifty years of great music all over the aesthetic map.
Friday February 10, 1978. The Main Point. Late set. Jack DeJohnette, John Abercrombie, Lester Bowie, George Mraz. New Directions. No more than 25 people in the audience. The adverts for the hit noted only John Abercrombie/Jack DeJohnette so I went in expecting to hear Timeless/Gateway. MIND BLOWN. And one of the most explosive sets I've ever witnessed and still one of the best music experiences of my life. When the first New Directions record (tracked in Europe months later and with Eddie Gomez) was released I was surprised how relatively subdued it was compared to the live performance I remembered. A year or so later New Directions came through town again, this time at Starr's on Bainbridge. The now famous restaurateur and club namesake Steven Starr begged me to leave before admitting the audience for the sold out second set and I politely declined. I've seen Jack in many settings and combos in the years that followed but I always referenced that cold night in Bryn Mawr.
Gateway and then Timeless were my gateways into Jack DeJohnette. At the Gateway concert at the Michigan Theater in Detroit he played the most astonishing drum solo I've ever heard, beginning softly on the cymbals and building over six (probably) minutes to an absolute explosion of sound and rhythm. At the end of the show, for some reason as John Abercrombie left the stage, he flipped the bird to the, by then, wildly clapping audience, and we never got our encore.
I was looking forward to your comments regarding Jack and your tribute was a joy to read, as I did several times. I became a jazz lover in the early 70s, walking through the doors thrown wide open by fusion when I was a prog-rock loving 12-year-old. I was lucky enough to have music loving hippie neighbors that my parents approved of and a couple of like-minded older relatives that also had my parents' only slightly conditional seal of approval. From them I learned to love not just Mahavishnu and RTF, but I learned where those musics came from via Miles, etc. Then perhaps being a little bombastic myself, I uncharacteristically found myself turning away from the occasional bombast of blues and rock heavy fusion and found myself reveling in most of the more subtle fare on offer from the then young ECM, much of it with many of the same musicians that I was already admiring from fusion and it's historical roots. And though my musical interests are wide ranging, I'll unashamedly admit to being a full-on ECM fetishist to this day. I'm ALL there for the "chamber" in my jazz. I revere Manfred's apparent ability to get artists that are seemingly at risk of excessiveness in any particular pursuit to "calm the fuck down" while supporting the courage it takes for an artist to simply be beautiful. And I'm saying this on a day when I've been binging Cecil instead of John and Lester instead of David. Apologies for the ramble, but where I was going with this was that through all of it Jack was always there, sounding unmistakably like himself but also fitting like a glove into every setting and making that setting fabulously better than it would have been without him. So many talk about individuals crossing real and/or imagined borders, be they aesthetic, artistic, musical, political, racial, whatever. But Jack did it with such skill and grace that it was always the non-event that it should've been. The now and it's history, like Jack himself simply was. It's not a cliché to say that he was a welcome ever-presence in the soundtrack of my life. This one is going to take some time to work through. Thanks for making the process easier. And thanks for alerting me to some of his recorded music that I wasn't aware of.
Since it was released in 1982, I have loved the tune "Mys-story" from Chico Freeman's "Tradition in Transition," with a powerful Jack D. contribution. On this record, Jack also plays Monk-homage piano on the cover of "Jackie-ing."
Was the Special Edition gig in New Orleans for a convention in '90?
Yes exactly. I also saw the DeJohnette drum solo clinic. Now THAT was amazing. Other memories of the weekend: I believe the big band concert was the last time Mel Lewis played the drums in public; Kenny Werner offered a gorgeous intro to “A Child is Born.” And down the street I saw Cedar Walton play with Don Menza. The student ensemble I was in included Chris Dave on drums.
Nice. I was there as well, the clinic too. Had the same thoughts about the band.
I hear you on that first Oahu-Goodrick album: the band has gelled on the follow up, Audio Visualscapes.
Thanks as always for the very particular and situated perspective!
I started listening to Jack when I was 15 years old. I got interested in jazz partially through my Uncle (Mat Marucci; who is an excellent drummer in his own rite) when he told me that his favorite drummers were Elvin, Jack and Tony so I bought Keith Jarrett Trio – Changes on cassette tape.
I loved the unique sound and clarity of Jack’s ride cymbal on the first cut Flying Pt 1 and I’ve been hooked on the trio ever since…seeking out everything they produced on ECM and everything I can find that’s been recorded on FM radio in Europe or any bootleg with decent sound I can get my hands on. The range of perfectly recorded unrehearsed live dates that these musicians have released has given me such happiness for the past 40 years… from the very simply stated to the most complex, out and intricate… to me very few bands come close to the level that they seemed to get to every time they played together. What an inspiration. And as to a recorded history of 3 legendary virtuoso musicians – I don’t think there is much else out there like it.
I’m sad to hear that Jack’s not with us anymore. I just hope that ECM still plans on releasing many the Trio’s unreleased concerts and his unreleased music to get me through the next 40 years or however long I last on this earth
.
check this date out Ethan if you haven’t - unreleased Herbie, Ron and Tony trio concert
https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/les-legendes-du-jazz/herbie-hancock-en-concert-le-23-juillet-1983-au-festival-de-jazz-d-antibes-juan-les-pins-1-2-3430708
nice comment!
https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/les-legendes-du-jazz/martial-solal-gary-peacock-max-roach-en-concert-le-26-octobre-1991-au-theatre-des-champs-elysees-a-paris-7119324
Check this out —- pretty different and wonderful band.
Rick
I saw Jack DeJohnette with John Abercrombie and likely Alex Foster and Peter Warren at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr. It was a snowy night in January 1978 and due to the weather, there was a small crowd so we had front row streets. I used to play Jack’s album, Sorcery, with Abercrombie and Bennie Maupin and my wife couldn’t listen to it, too much going on. But seeing Jack perform live won her over, just watching him move was astonishing for both of us. Seeming effortless, he guided the band through one of the most intense shows I’ve witnessed.
Jack DeJohnette's New Directions (with George Mraz in place of Eddie Gomez) played The Main Point on February 10, 1978. I was at the late set and recall there being less than 25 people in the room. They performed as if there were a thousand in the audience. And did an encore, but not Back Woods Song that I called out. (Jack: "that's a different band.") While I was paying the doorman my $6 or whatever, Jack was hassling said doorman, "I need the bread." I wonder if that is the gig you reference above?
THIS is the Jack DeJohnette of Jack DeJohnette eulogies. Absolutely perfect.
I've been immersed in DeJohnette's recordings since I heard the news from you this morning. So sad to lose a true great. All my albums are on iTunes, and I discovered I have 170 albums featuring his drumming! Man, what a legacy. My favorites are too numerous to mention, but the M.F. played on Bitches Brew, which I bought at 18 years old in 1970. So that's 55 years of listening to Jack. My favorite album may have been Hudson, and I was disappointed there wasn't a follow-up. I'm going to check out the few albums I don't own yet. Thanks for letting us know, Ethan.
Jack meant so much to me. So many shows from 1976 to 2019.
Top 3 live sets:
1-1976 Alex Foster bass Holland. 100 seats in Philly Burns. He gave me his sticks after 2nd set!!
2-Jack 2005 with Latin percussion Ensemble. UofP Philly. Never knew he was so fluid in Latin clave! INCREDIBLE 😲
3- Montreux fest 2000. Of course Jarrett made the band walk off until sound man (& anyone breathing!) Were fixed & quiet! Jack re-ignited the trio when they returned to stage.
I MISS HIM ALREADY...RIP.
Are you familiar with 'To Hear Is To See', by the somewhat obscure but very good saxophonist, Eric Kloss Ethan? From 1969 and it has the full Miles rhythm section of Chick, Dave and Jack, and there are two odd metre pieces on it, one in 7 and one in 5. It's the only example I know of hearing Chick play in odd metres in the swing, or swing related idioms. They play with the same fire and bravado they did with Miles, it's a very fine record, even if the piano is a bit beaten up. Regarding Triplicate, I have a bootleg live concert that Steve gave me - amazing, it's like Triplicate on steroids!
I too have a great Triplicate bootleg somewhere that never got digitized. I have never heard the Kloss, had no idea they played in odd meter then. Thanks Ronan!
The Kloss is on YT, definitely worth a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xXmA9EDvTI
Another interesting side note about this album is that Kloss is blind and is only 20 years old on this recording - imagine at that age having the confidence to write an album of originals for these guys to play!
DeJohnette makes an occasional appearance in George Lewis's great book about the AACM, A POWER STRONGER THAN ITSELF; e.g., "Friday afternoons were devoted to rehearsals that brought Wilson students [from Chicago's Woodrow Wilson Junior College, including Malachi Favors, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill] together with the cream of Chicago’s musicians. Present at these events were people like Eddie Harris, Charles Stepney, drummers Steve McCall and Jack DeJohnette, bassists Betty Dupree and Jimmy Willis, pianist Andrew Hill, and several musicians who had been part of the Sun Ra Arkestra, including trumpeter Hobart Dotson and percussionists Richard Evans and Jim Herndon."