Jack DeJohnette knows how to turn traditions inside out. He can invest light-touch cymbal playing with the feel of pulsing funk. His freer patterns of blast can sound like some of the most refined avant-percussion you've ever heard. Though while DeJohnette is obviously an original, he's not bent on tearing down all the boundaries between jazz sub-genres. His engagement with various aspects of blues and swing flows from an evident reverence for each specific style. Even when pushing his own creative language to new places, DeJohnette manages to keep the inherited forms in view.
His half-century discography suggests how invaluable (and how rare) that philosophy of performance has been. DeJohnette played on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, was part of an acoustic trio led by pianist Bill Evans, and also collaborated with experimental visionaries from the Chicago scene, many of whom were active in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (or AACM). In decades since, he's worked with Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny, while recording frequently as a leader for the ECM label.
DeJohnette's 2015 release on the imprint, Made in Chicago, referenced his deep relationships with various AACM musicians while staying mostly focused on recent compositions from that all-star group of players. The drummer's latest album follows a broadly similar path, by affording DeJohnette a chance to create some new pieces alongside two scions of jazz: the saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and the bassist (and electronics whiz) Matthew Garrison. The aura of history is inescapable on a project that includes them both, given that their fathers were members of the “classic” John Coltrane Quartet. And DeJohnette's new trio plunges right into the deepest of jazz-legacy waters by tackling one of the classic Coltrane quartet's most iconic tunes, at the very beginning of In Movement.
“Alabama” was the elder Coltrane's response to the 1963 white-supremacist terror bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. The studio take is a piece that can stand with any work of tragic poetry, from any artistic discipline. When the climactic tenor line breaks through, there is an emotional transition—from a state of mourning to one of wrenching, cathartic protest. (Spike Lee used this portion of the song to shattering effect during 4 Little Girls, his documentary on the murders.) It's one of the great compositions and performances of music history. As a consequence, it's a risky thing for anyone else to touch.
Here, after a few seconds of cymbal work from DeJohnette, the trio's performance begins in earnest when Ravi Coltrane plays a closing portion of the song's main theme. This needle-drop, in media res choice conjures up the haunting suggestion of “Alabama” playing on an everlasting loop, as a mandated accompaniment for each and every occurrence of racially motivated violence. This sense of disquiet is also promoted by Garrison's electric bass playing. His clouds of fuzz-tone thicken noticeably when Coltrane moves up to the famous high-register cry. The purgatorial (or else eternally damned) quality of this “Alabama” feels even even grimmer than the original. There's no swinging, breakdown section (as in the originally issued album version). And even DeJohnette's rollicking percussive moments have a pensive air. Still, the liberties taken here feel well thought-out, while also keeping the performance from seeming backward looking.
The mood brightens considerably during the pair of lengthy (and jointly composed) original tunes that follow “Alabama.” “Two Jimmys” is a joint tribute to Garrison's father as well as Jimi Hendrix, and it has a variable-but-intense groove pitched somewhere between Sun Ship and Band of Gypsys. But the real stomper on In Movement is the trio's Earth, Wind and Fire cover, “Serpentine Fire,” which this trio stretches with abandon. Similarly refashioned is “Blue in Green” from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue*,* which finds DeJohnette moving from behind his kit to offer some rich support on piano. Along with two lyrical ballads by DeJohnette, this cover also offers a respite after some of the album's noisier material.
The only cut on the 50-minute set that feels a little too beholden to the past is “Rashied,” a tribute to Coltrane's hookup with drummer Rashied Ali on the duo set Insterstellar Space. It's certainly an energetic performance—and both DeJohnette and Coltrane avoid sounding like they're directly copying the players this piece sets out to honor. But the duo-setup that animates this performance doesn't feel as freshly conceived as the trio's performance of “Alabama” does.
That may sound like a high critical bar, but it's one this group sets for itself. Despite the grand shadows cast by their forbears, In Movement shows how both Ravi and Matthew have emerged as distinct instrumentalists on the contemporary jazz scene. And they have skills that match up with DeJohnette's own. No one in this group has to run from history, or overly fetishize it, in order to sound like an individual—a shared skill that makes In Movement a frequently spellbinding experience.
