DeJohnette Goes on Percussion Safari

Is Jack DeJohnette just too versatile for his own good? It sometimes seems that way for an artist whose restless forays into an enormously wide array of music underscore his refusal to be pigeon-holed or over-categorized.

“Oneness,” not unlike a previous album, “Dancing With Nature Spirits,” is DeJohnette on yet another surprise journey--a tempestuous trip through frontiers of percussive improvisation. DeJohnette’s always superb drumming is joined by the colorful, often indefinable percussion sounds of Don Alias. Pianist Michael Cain, classically trained and a world music aficionado, adds lines that alternate from a spare starkness to lush, rhapsodic chords and urgent bop lines, and bassist Jerome Harris’ sympathetic foundations have the feel of unspoken musical intuition.

Most of the tracks float through space like jazz zephyrs, driven along their way by the interactive energies of the two drummers. And even the sole piece that finds a propulsive groove, “Jack In,” is tinged with strange, meandering sounds that move around and through Cain’s driving solo.

But from start to finish, it is music that, satisfying that most demanding of jazz definitions, constantly surprises. It’s always fascinating to hear DeJohnette in his partnerships with players such as Keith Jarrett and John Abercrombie. But there’s nothing quite like outings such as this one, in which his own musical vision is moved to the front and center.

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