Monday, 26 October 2026
A year without Jack DeJohnette: the third man of the ECM trio
One year ago today, on Sunday, 26 October 2025, the American drummer Jack DeJohnette died at the age of 83 in Woodstock, New York, USA.
He and Harry Pepl shared an encounter that became legend: at the Saalfelden jazz festival (Salzburg, Austria) in September 1980 he spontaneously sat in with the duo of Pepl and Werner Pirchner, the Austrian composer and vibraphonist, and in 1983 the trio album they made together was released by the renowned European jazz label ECM (ECM 1237). Later they both played in the Michel Portal Unit, the band of the French clarinettist and saxophonist Michel Portal, in Paris and Amiens, France. Pepl said of him that the two had understood each other “immediately at the first or second rhythmic impulse, so that everyone knew where the other was”. For Harry Pepl’s 75th birthday in 2020, DeJohnette wrote for Ö1, the cultural radio station of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF: “He was an amazing guitarist, pianist and composer. His harmonic, rhythmic and sound concepts were very unique!” In remembrance: the trio album on Spotify and the photos from Paris in 1987 in the archive.