American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer Jack DeJohnette performs at the Five Continents Marseille Jazz festival, in Marseille, southern France on July 18, 2018. CLAUDE PARIS / AP
Jack DeJohnette, a celebrated jazz drummer who worked with Miles Davis on his landmark 1970 fusion album and collaborated with Keith Jarrett and a vast array of other jazz greats, has died at 83.
The acclaimed drummer, bandleader and composer died on Sunday, October 26, in Kingston, New York, of congestive heart failure, surrounded by his wife, family and close friends, his assistant, Joan Clancy, told The Associated Press.
A winner of two Grammy awards, the Chicago-born DeJohnette began his musical life as a classical pianist, starting training at age 4, before taking up the drums with his high school band. He was in demand in his early years as both a pianist and a drummer.
Over the years he collaborated not only with Davis and Jarrett but also with names like John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Betty Carter – "virtually every major jazz figure from the 1960s on," wrote the National Endowment for the Arts, which honored him in 2012 with a Jazz Master Fellowship.
