I attended the 49th annual Monterey Jazz Festival over the weekend of Sept 15-17, and enjoyed an historic moment when 85 year-old jazz legend Dave Brubeck brought the crowd to its feet with his MJF commissioned piece "Cannery Row Suite". This 30-minute opera is based on characters from John Steinbeck's famous novel, including Doc, Dora, Mack, and Lee Chong. Amazingly, given the length of the piece, Brubeck captured the flavor of a time and place that Steinbeck knew well, and later fictionalized. He also managed to pretty well summarize the plot of the novel, and relate many of Steinbeck's underlying ideas about humanity and the interdependence of living beings.

I contacted the Monterey Jazz Festival to find out if there are any plans to release a recording or DVD of the Suite, but they said, "Sorry, there are no such plans at this time." Their best suggestion was to keep checking the Monterey Jazz Festival Web site to see if anything changes.

In the meanwhile, we'll just have to settle for reading John Steinbeck's classic Cannery Row - a book well worth re-reading.