The time of year when you must pick and choose what to do around town is fast approaching. The Coast Guard Community Festival, Exit Zero Jazz Festival, and the New Jersey Audubon Birding Festival all occur over one weekend. That’s a lot of festivals around town.
The Jazz Festival, held twice a year, was historically held in the spring and fall. “We have been trying to move the festival into better weather and away from April,” festival organizer and promoter Michael Kline said. The Exit Zero Jazz Festival is a 3-day musical feast featuring hundreds of musicians and thousands of visitors. Exit Zero Jazz presented international touring artists performing on the stage in Cape May Convention Hall, plus a full weekend schedule in the bars and restaurants of Cape May.
But birders and jazz together? In last week’s Nature Talks column, Tom Reed wrote about how popular May is for birders in Cape May. “People travel here from across the country, sometimes across the world, to experience our version of spring,” Tom wrote. The spring migration and the influx of world-class musical performances create unique opportunities. Turns out birders love jazz.
At the Sea Crest Inn on Broadway and Beach Avenue, where I manage, at least three birding tours fill the hotel, supporting Tom Reed’s position. Field Guides, Naturalist Journeys, and Nature Trek are all professional tour operators who sell Cape May to clients who want to experience the finest East Coast birding. Nature Trek travels from the United Kingdom with a dozen birding enthusiasts.
Jazz, birdsong fill the air
“We created special packages and ticket opportunities for participants in the New Jersey Spring Festival,” Kline said. Birding and jazz do go together. Headliner Samara Joy returned to Cape May this past weekend. With three Grammy wins and a chart-topping debut album already under her belt, the 25-year-old vocal sensation continues to amaze fans and jazz scribes alike with her timeless charms.
The first time Samara Joy came to Cape May to perform at the Exit Zero Jazz Festival (in the Fall of 2021), she was accompanied by a trio led by guitarist Pasquale Grasso. This time out, in her third appearance at the biannual gathering, the Bronx-born was accompanied by an octet, performing lavishly appointed music from her acclaimed third album, Portrait.
On the other end of town this weekend, the Coast Guard Community Foundation held its annual Coast Guard Community Festival. Hosted by the Training Center Cape May (TRACEN). Festival goers looked inside an Active-Duty Coast Guard Base while exploring Training Center Cape May, the nation’s only boot camp for enlisted Coast Guard Recruits. While on foot or by trolley, you could view and go inside the U.S. Coast Guard Station Cape May vessels, view a Coast Guard helicopter up close, and much more.
Cape May County’s designation as a Coast Guard Community reflects the deep and enduring nature of the relationships that the region’s residents share with Coast Guard personnel, families, and visitors. The designation recognizes what the Cape May community does for the Coast Guard, including how we treat personnel and, in part, how we receive the number of families visiting Cape May each week to attend graduation at the training center.
Volunteers from the foundation meet every Friday on the corner of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh Avenue to send off recently graduated boot camp recruits. This practice started during the COVID-19 pandemic when families could not attend graduation.
In more somber news around town, local surfers and lifeguards mourned the loss of a surfing icon. Ed Kane unexpectedly passed away at his Kill Devil Hills, NC home. He was 55. “Life can be great, life can be cruel! All we can do is live our lives in our own way. I am 55, and I have had friends thrive, survive, and unfortunately have lost too many over the years,” Lifeguard Chief Harry Back Jr. wrote in a Facebook post. “The Kanes lived up the street from me when we moved into North Street in 1979, and they immediately took me in as part of the family.”
One surfer told me there is a sacred place we call Flat Rock in the middle of “Surfers Beach” on Stockton Place. A handful of Kane’s friends gathered here to paddle out in his memory.
