A tribute to Jack DeJohnette, the late jazz drummer, pianist, and longtime Woodstock resident, will bring nearly 50 musicians to Kingston’s Ulster Performing Arts Center on Aug. 9, what would have been his 84th birthday.
“Celebrating Jack DeJohnette: Sound Travels” will honor the two-time Grammy winner, whose work moved across genres and generations. He performed with musicians as varied as Miles Davis and Levon Helm.
Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, DeJohnette’s friend for more than 40 years and a frequent collaborator, is co-presenting the event. The gathering was conceived by Metheny and jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington.
“He was the best,” Metheny said of DeJohnette in an email interview with The Overlook. “He was funny. He was kind. He was inspiring.
“It was always great to be on the bandstand with Jack. But in a bunch of ways, that all pales compared to the friendship we shared across all those years. That is what I will miss the most.”
DeJohnette died Oct. 26, 2025, after a career that included collaborations with musicians who, like him, did not just perform jazz, but reimagined it while pushing it across emerging frontiers. His collaborators included some of the defining figures of 20th- and 21st-century jazz, including John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and Herbie Hancock.
DeJohnette received a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor for jazz artists.
Presenters of the UPAC event include Metheny, Carrington, DeJohnette’s wife, Lydia, and Danny Melnick of Saugerties, a jazz concert promoter and close friend of the DeJohnettes.
The evening will feature nationally and internationally known musicians who will perform, speak, or both in DeJohnette’s honor. The program includes John Scofield, Esperanza Spalding, Ravi Coltrane, Bruce Hornsby, Dave Holland, and John Medeski, with additional participants expected.
“I’ve been overwhelmed by the love and support for this celebration of Jack,” Lydia DeJohnette said in an email to The Overlook. “Between the incredible artists who have offered to be part of this, to the production team of some of the best anyone could ask for, to Terri Lynn Carrington and Pat Metheny who came up with the idea, I give you everlasting gratitude from the bottom of my heart.”
The Broadway Theater at the Ulster Performing Arts Center, known as UPAC, is operated by the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie. Tickets go on sale to Bardavon members at 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 3.
Member ticket sales are available only at the UPAC box office, 601 Broadway, Kingston, and the Bardavon box office, 35 Market St., Poughkeepsie.
Tickets go on sale to the public at 10 a.m. Friday, June 5, and can be purchased at the box offices and through Ticketmaster. Tickets cost $100, $80, $65, and $45.
The concert will benefit two Woodstock organizations that the DeJohnettes have supported for years: Family of Woodstock and The Table at Woodstock.
Family of Woodstock provides mental health support, shelters for domestic violence victims and people who are homeless, restorative justice services, and other resources. The Table at Woodstock works to address food insecurity and expand access to community resources.
The concert also carries a distinctly local meaning. DeJohnette performed at the highest levels of the music industry, and his local gigs in Woodstock made for memorable nights as well.
“There are so many things over the years that we did together, from local trio gigs at Joyous Lake and the Bearsville Theater, to international festivals around Asia and Europe, that I can’t even remember them all,” Metheny wrote in his email. “Every time I was able to play with Jack was incredible. There was just nothing like it. He was the greatest drummer of our time.”
Metheny said that DeJohnette’s playing embodied the true meaning of “avant-garde,” but added a caveat.
“By that, I don’t mean that he necessarily played exclusively in the cliche abstract meaning of the term, as it is often thought of in this music, but in its most literal sense,” Metheny said. “There was never for a moment anything about the way Jack played that fit into the obvious or expected ways that people play. The way he played was so unusual, so personal and so unique. But at the same time, what made it reach to the highest levels that music can achieve is the way it always remained deeply rooted in a humanity that seemed to reach to infinity in his hands.”
Toward the end of his email to The Overlook, Metheny shared the story of the first time he spoke to DeJohnette. Their conversation focused on Metheny’s debut record, “Bright Size Life.”
“When my first record, ‘Bright Size Life,’ was recorded in 1975, I was sitting at home one day and the phone rang,” Metheny wrote. “It was Jack. At that point, I had never met him. He had somehow gotten my number and said he just wanted to call me to tell me how much he liked the record and what I was going for. It was one of the greatest phone calls I ever could have gotten—just out of the blue like that, from someone who was already one of my heroes.
“That was Jack. And I know I am not the only one as a young guy (at that time) who got that kind of encouragement. There are generations of us who were lifted up by Jack in so many ways, on and off the bandstand.”
Metheny’s memory is more than likely indicative of the recollections that will be shared from the UPAC stage on Aug. 9.
Doors open at 4 p.m. The show starts at 5 p.m.
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.