The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

When Jack DeJohnette produced and recorded Album Album at New York's Power Station in June 1984, he created a classic. It was his fourth, and final, Special Edition recording for the ECM label.

DeJohnette's playing was inspirational; at 43, he was at the peak of his powers and his band played with the conviction of a group of young men who knew their band was indeed special – which it was – with the result that the totality of their music often seemed greater than the sum of its component parts. DeJohnette later reflected that he had to, “Push the musicians to play as creatively as they were capable of playing – or more than they were capable of, or, rather, what they thought they were capable of. In other words, they had to play not only what they knew, but also what they didn't know.” DeJohnette composed and arranged all the material except ‘Monk's Mood’ (which he arranged as a sort of eulogy to the composer), achieving a free-flowing rapprochement between compositional design and improvisational freedom that rejected open-ended blowing: “People's attention spans aren't as great as they were in Coltrane's time and you have to adjust,” he said.

Although there were no drum solos – only brief breaks – DeJohnette's complete musicianship was the unifying factor in a remarkably varied set of compositions – of which ‘Ahmad the Terrible’ and the outstanding ‘Third World Anthem’ are the highest spots in an album where every track is a high spot. Listen, for example, to DeJohnette's rousing piano solo on ‘Ahmad the Terrible’ (dedicated to Ahmad Jamal); thanks to multi-tracking, he shows what an accomplished pianist he was. Like the album itself, it's powerful and majestic and grows on you with each listening.

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