NEW YORK, NY.- In the early 1960s, Jack DeJohnette, a pianist from Chicago, took a weeklong gig at the Showboat club in Philadelphia with saxophonist Eddie Harris and played his second instrument: the drums. (A bandmate had left a set at his house.) At one point, Harris, an older player whose career was starting to gain steam, took DeJohnette aside.

“Eddie said to me, he said, ‘Man, you play nice piano,’” DeJohnette recalled last month, sitting at the kitchen table of the cabin-style home near Woodstock, New York, where he and his wife, Lydia, have lived for around 50 years. “‘But something about your drumming — you’re a natural on drums. And you’ve got to decide which one’s going to be your main instrument.’”

To anyone who has followed jazz for the past 50-plus years, his eventual choice will be obvious. DeJohnette, now 82, is drumming royalty.

Starting in the mid-’60s, he fearlessly tackled the era’s new hybrid sounds, anchoring a quartet led by saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd that became a surprise crossover success. He then moved on to the game-changing early fusion outfits of Miles Davis, who wrote in his autobiography that DeJohnette “gave me a certain deep groove that I just loved to play over.” Later, he excelled in a wide variety of contexts, including the state-of-the-art traditionalism of Keith Jarrett’s so-called Standards Trio — which endured for more than three decades — and the expansive explorations of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, summoning hurtling energy or impressionistic calm as needed.

“He is in the pantheon of our greatest drummers,” Lloyd wrote of DeJohnette in an email. “From the first time we played together there was a deep simpatico.” In a phone interview, Jarrett, who also shared time with DeJohnette in Lloyd’s and Davis’ bands, described the drummer’s contributions as “just a natural flow of what needed to be done.”

As his reputation on drums grew, DeJohnette never stopped playing piano, a fact he will underscore at a rare solo concert Saturday at the Woodstock Playhouse, where he will perform on the instrument. As heard on “Return,” a 2016 vinyl-only LP that was his first unaccompanied piano full-length and featured mostly his own compositions, his style is unhurried and luminous, technically sound but primarily focused on finely honed mood-setting.

Jon Batiste, who performed with DeJohnette at a 2022 concert in Kingston, New York, and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts this past summer, said that when he hears him at the keys, he thinks not of a drummer who plays piano but of “actually more: This is someone who’s figured out how to transmit their artistry to the piano.”

DeJohnette remains humble about his keyboard work. “I don’t think I’m a fantastic pianist,” he said in his distinctive voice, deep yet airy, “but I think I play well enough to tell a story.”

DeJohnette started on piano around age 5, encouraged by a local teacher and his grandmother, who bought him a Wurlitzer spinet. As a teenager, he took cues from both Fats Domino and local luminary Ahmad Jamal, and eventually began gigging around town with his own combos. Later, as he moved to New York, prioritized the drums and became a prolific bandleader, he composed at the piano, sometimes playing auxiliary keyboard or melodica on record, and released the occasional full-length at the keys, including “The Jack DeJohnette Piano Album” from 1985, leading a trio.

“It made me a better drummer, because if I’m playing with a group or playing a song, I know what the chord changes are; I know the form,” DeJohnette said. “So I have a more keen sense of how to interact and how to inspire and be inspired.”

Pianist George Colligan said that DeJohnette, his frequent collaborator, never lets him down when they improvise together. “He supports, and he keeps that intensity, and he’ll follow you all the way,” he said. “So if you’re going somewhere, he’s going to help you get there.”

DeJohnette no longer tours because of a combination of heart issues (now under control) and a post-COVID distaste for travel and crowds. In recent years, at the encouragement of his wife, who is also his manager, he has gigged mostly near his home, inviting a steady stream of world-class musicians to share the stage at local venues. Colligan recalled a 2023 concert at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston that honored Davis and featured an all-star cast including Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana and members of Living Colour.

“It was supposed to be a tribute to Miles,” Colligan said. “But to me, it was like, all those people were doing it because they loved Jack so much.”

For DeJohnette, this new, localized phase of his career feels suitable. “Going to New York City isn’t grabbing me anymore,” he said, when asked how often he makes the roughly two-hour trip downstate. “Not for a long time, actually.”

Stepping down off his back deck in jeans, a navy blue windbreaker and tortoiseshell glasses, he began a tour of the property by pointing out a breathtaking, unobstructed view of the Catskill Mountains. Strolling around to the front, he sized up a snake slithering through the grass — “They get much bigger than that” — en route to a fruit and vegetable garden. “They’ve still got some growing to do,” he said, pointing to some blackberries. “Should be ready by mid-August.”

The increased time at home has given DeJohnette time for reflection both musical and personal. Lydia DeJohnette and Joan Clancy, the DeJohnettes’ personal assistant, are currently cataloging and organizing his vast sonic archive, containing decades’ worth of unreleased recordings. One tape from this trove is a turbocharged 1966 live set from the storied East Village venue Slugs’ Saloon that features DeJohnette alongside pianist McCoy Tyner, saxophonist Joe Henderson and bassist Henry Grimes. It will come out on Blue Note in November as “Forces of Nature,” a title chosen, he said, “because everybody’s being pulled and pushing each other to the umpteenth level, and it shows.”

DeJohnette also revealed another, more private inventory that began as his touring schedule wound down. “I was at a low ebb in my life,” he said, pausing and sighing. “I had a public image, but then the personal image is extremely challenging,” he continued, specifying a withdrawal process from “being a celebrity and what comes with that.”

“What shall I say?” he went on. “I am a self-absorbed person who’s always thinking more about himself than other people, and this is a constant thing that my wife, Lydia, has been trying to help me with, and other people.”

In a phone interview, his wife said DeJohnette was “aware of what he’s been missing,” noting that her husband has been spending time in therapy. “He realizes that he was very gifted and he’s grateful for that, but he also realizes what he lacked as a human, a certain detachment from life.”

Speaking about his regular music practice at home, DeJohnette seemed to suggest that his inner quest continued there. He plays either in his living room, on a Kawai grand piano, or downstairs in his basement studio, where he works out ideas on a Korg Kronos keyboard and drums along to favorite CDs like John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Davis’ “Seven Steps to Heaven.” Describing these sessions on the two instruments at the core of his life’s work, he referred to a private process that nevertheless resembles a communion — “cocreating with the source of everything,” honoring ideas as they arise.

“I’m not playing for fans; I’m playing for me, and through that, discovering myself in a deeper way so that I have more to give,” he said. “To give of myself, and to be able to receive.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.