On Jack DeJohnette's album Oneness, he is accompanied by Don Alias, who plays a huge amount of Latin percussion instruments without the music sounding Latin. The rhythms are taken from that tradition and set against producer Manfred Eicher's icy nighttime skyline, with DeJohnette's ride cymbal defining the placement of the stars. DeJohnette's experience from his early years in the Chicago free jazz
… scene keeps the music surprising and mysterious. The structure of the pieces on this CD offers enough room for improvisation. Listening to how each musician reacts to the ideas presented to him is a lot of fun. In the last part of Priestesses Of The Mist, the metal connection between piano strings and cymbals is explored in a rhythmic improvisation. In Free Above The Sea the listener is reminded of the Japanese Kabuki theater by the isolated woodblock and plucked strings. In From The Heart DeJohnette's fascinating Baroque cymbal playing adorns the main part of the piece until the band briefly bursts into a full-fledged swing section.more
