So what is this love affair with the Monterey Jazz Festival all about? This weekend, about 40,000 bodies are expected to push through the turnstiles of the Monterey County Fairgrounds to hear massive amounts of music, yes, but also to get sunburned or rained on and to have their listening disrupted by low-flying jets from nearby Monterey Peninsula Airport.
So what's it about, exactly? Hard to put my finger on it, sitting at sunset on a patch of lawn, as I did Friday with a thousand or so other jazz fans, all rapt, while a saxophonist named George Young played “Lush Life," the most beautiful song ever written about despair. That experience pretty much captured the soul-nurturing power of this festival, now in its 51st year and running through tonight.
Because “Lush Life," composed by Billy Strayhorn, is so overwhelmingly beautiful that in the end it ceases to be about hardship; it just drops you into another brain zone, erases the wear and tear of life and lets you focus on the deeper possibilities.
Perhaps that's it. At Monterey, you're surrounded by thousands of people who understand that jazz holds the keys to better living and that George Young — a great player, but not a household name, by any stretch of the imagination — can deliver those keys.
But I'm getting too heavy about all this.
Saturday afternoon, the fairgrounds were jammed with thousands who weren't necessarily even there for the jazz.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
