All That Jazz in Cape May

It was a great escape to the Exit Zero Jazz Festival last weekend in Cape May, N.J. My mantra for the weekend was get away, get loose and get lost in the music. Politics and the mess in Washington magically disappeared from my radar screen for several days as I did just that and got lost in the music.

Held twice a year in the fall and spring, the Exit Zero Jazz Festival is a smorgasbord of jazz performed by an array of musicians at a mix of venues around town, from Carney’s, Sea Salt and the Rusty Nail to the Cape May Convention Hall.

The performers played with a shared passion that was contagious. Their intensity enabled you to feel the music in every cell in your body because when it’s good, really good, music takes you to another place. Jazz great Wynton Marsalis likened that passion to “sustained intensity,” which he said “equals ecstasy.”

Tim Price Jazz-a-Delic, New Breed Brass Band and C.L.A.F.F.Y. were among several groups we saw. Our table at Carney’s was close enough to Jazz-a-Delic that I could almost reach out and touch Price as he blew on his sax and electric bassoon.  

Price exemplifies the versatility and deep talent of the Exit Zero Jazz Festival musicians. He’s performed with jazz greats like Sonny Stitt, Jack McDuff, Don Patterson and Benny Green, as well as with rock and soul icons like Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner and Dr. John.

When Marsalis observed, “Jazz means working things out musically with other people,” he might have been talking about Price and the other Exit Zero Jazz Festival performers. “You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don’t agree with what they’re playing…,” Marsalis said. “It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all.”

New Breed Brass Band has its roots in the culture of New Orleans – five of the band’s founding members are New Orleans natives – and performed an alchemy of funk, rock, jazz and hip hop with amazing energy. The group is a past recipient of the OffBeat Magazine Music and Cultural Arts Foundation’s Best Emerging Artist Award.

C.L.A.F.F.Y. is led by bassist and composer Alex Claffy, who has been described by JAZZIZ Magazine as a bassist with “…an ear for timeless melodies — regardless of genre or era — and he engages with them with originality and unbridled creativity.” Claffy has performed in Europe and is a regular at Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, where he’s next appearing on Nov. 21. 

The festival also featured well-known performers including Manhattan Transfer, David Sanborn and John Oates. And the Atlantic Ocean, with its pounding surf and cool wind blowing in off the beach, formed the perfect backdrop.

Price described the Exit Zero Jazz Festival as encompassing “…genres of music that all move together. The festival is made up of a lot of stuff, which is what jazz is all about.” A lot of stuff indeed, to which I would add, and about teaching us “…the world is big enough to accommodate us all.”