(CAPE MAY, NJ) -- The Exit Zero Jazz Festival takes place in Cape May from November 7-9, 2025. Performances take place in several venues with Stanley Clarke and Cassandra Wilson as the festival headliners.
2025 Schedule & Venues: Convention Hall (Convention Hall (714 Beach Avenue), Clemans Theater for the Arts (717 Franklin Street), Carney's Main Room (411 Beach Avenue), Carney's Other Room (413 Beach Avenue), and Harry's at the Montreal Beach Resort (1025 Beach Avenue).
Friday, November 7 @ Convention Hall - New Philly Sound (12:00pm), Amina Figarova Sextet (2:00pm), Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen (4:00pm), Omar Sosa Quarteto Americanos (7:00pm), and Stanley Clarke (9:00pm).
The Story: A profoundly influential musical force from the ‘70s to the present, five-time Grammy Award winner and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master Stanley Clarke will make his first visit to the Exit Zero Jazz Festival with his exciting new band, 4EVER. Accompanied by a dynamic crew of young virtuosos — violinist Evan Garr, pianist-keyboardist Cameron Graves, saxophonist Emilio Modeste, guitarist Colin Cook and drummer Jeremiah Collier — the revered elder statesman of the bass will perform new genre-bending material touching on rock, funk and hip-hop while also addressing his jazz fusion legacy with Return To Forever and as a prolific composer-bandleader in his own right over the past five decades.
The Philadelphia native came up playing in New York during the early ‘70s with such iconic jazz musicians as Curtis Fuller, Pharaoh Sanders, Dexter Gordon and Stan Getz. After meeting Chick Corea in 1972, they formed Return To Forever, which was primarily an acoustic, Latin flavored groove in its earliest incarnation. Follow their hugely influential 1973 album, Light as a Feather, the band transitioned to its second incarnation, recasting the group as a fusion powerhouse on Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy and subsequent albums like Where Have I Known You Before and the best-selling Romantic Warrior. After RTF disbanded, Clarke toured with the New Barbarians (with the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Ron Wood) in 1979, then formed the Clarke/Duke Project with former Frank Zappa keyboardist George Duke.
In 1988, he played in the band Animal Logic with drummer Stewart Copeland of The Police and in 2005 he toured as The Trio with banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. In 2008, Clarke formed SMV with fellow electric bassists Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten, later recording the album Thunder. In addition to recording 20 albums as a leader, Clarke has also written dozens of scores for television and movies, including Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Boyz n the Hood, Panther, Passenger 57, Barbershop: The Next Cut, Undercover Brother and What’s Love Got to Do With It.
The Sound: In the context of his intricate, often challenging compositions, Clarke will showcase his unparalleled chops on upright bass on “No Mystery,” the expansive title track of Return To Forever’s Grammy-winning album from 1975, and also on “Song for John,” the tune he co-wrote with Chick Corea on his 1975 album Journey to Love. And he will unleash his signature Alembic electric bass chops the grooving “1, 2, to the Bass” and his exhilarating, anthemic encore number, “School Days,” title track from his acclaimed 1976 solo album.
Friday, November 7 @ Carney's Main Room - Ocean Avenue Stompers (7:15pm & 9:35pm)
Friday, November 7 @ Carney's Other Room - Tuba Skinny (6:00pm & 8:25pm)
Friday, November 7 @ Harry's at the Montreal Beach Resort - Alphonso Horne Gotham Kings (5:00pm & 6:45pm)
Saturday, November 8 @ Convention Hall - Jazzhouse Kids (11:30am), Nojo 5 with Phillip Manuel (1:00pm), Endea Owens & The Cookout (2:45pm), Gabrielle Cavassa (6:00pm), and Roy Hargrove's Crisol (8:00pm)
The Story: The late Texas-born trumpeter shot to fame like a meteor streaking across the night sky, and then he was gone. From his aptly-named debut in 1990 for the RCA/Novus label, Diamond in the Rough, to a string of acclaimed albums for Verve, including 1994’s With the Tenors of Our Time to 2002’s Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall (with Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker) to a series of successful and highly influential albums through the early 2000s with his 10-piece R&B flavored RH Factor band, Hargrove made a profound impact on the international jazz scene. Hargrove died in November 2018 at the age of 49 of cardiac arrest brought on by a kidney disease. In 2022, as a tribute to the trumpeter and his lasting legacy, the Roy Hargrove Big Band was launched, featuring original band members and other musicians who supported Hargrove in his various ensembles.
In this special appearance at the Exit Zero Jazz Festival, core members of Hargrove’s original Crisol sextet — drummer Willie Jones III, bassist Gerald Cannon, trombonist Frank Lacy — will join with saxophonists Jacques Schwarz-Bart and Justin Robinson, along with rising stars Camerahn Alforque on trumpet and Tyler Bullock on piano and the powerhouse percussionist Yusnier Sanchez, to perform material from the trumpeter’s Grammy-winning 1997 album Havana and the 1998 recording, Grande-Terre, which wasn’t released by Verve until 2024.
The Sound: A seamless blend of classic hard bop, Afro-Cuban rhythms and Cuban piano guajeos, Grande-Terre and Havana, in some ways, represents an extension of Dizzy Gillespie’s experiments with Chano Pozo in blending bebop and Afro-Cuban in the 1940s. And with percolating tunes like “Rumba Roy,” “Kamala’s Dance,” “Lake Danse,” “Afreeka” and the exhilarating 12/8 number “Priorities,” this modern day incarnation of Roy Hargrove’s Crisol reminds us of Dizzy’s credo: that jazz can be full of improvisational daring while also drawing audiences to the dance floor.
Saturday, November 8 @ Clemans Theater for the Arts - New Philly Sound (3:30pm & 5:20pm)
Saturday, November 8 @ Carney's Main Room - Edgardo Cintron plays the jazz sides of Carlos Santaa (1:10pm & 3:30pm), Joslyn & The Sweet Compression (8:00pm & 9:50pm)
Saturday, November 8 @ Carney's Other Room - Marel Hidalgo Organ Trio (12:00pm & 2:20pm), Betz-Gilleg-Parrish-Landham (5:30pm & 7:20pm)
Sarturday, November 8 @ Harry's at the Montreal Beach Resort - David O. Clemans Second Line (11:00am), Brass Queens (1:00pm & 2:40pm), Alphonso Horne Gotham Kings (4:50pm & 6:15pm)
Sunday, November 9 @ Convention Hall - Cassandra Wilson 30th Anniversary New Moon Daughter (3:00pm)
It was 30 years ago, back in 1995, that jazz singer Cassandra Wilson began recording New Moon Daughter. That impactful offering, which artfully blended jazz and Americana, would have a profound effect on Wilson’s career, catapulting her to a new echelon of fame in the jazz world and earning her a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Suddenly, with the release of her second Blue Note album with producer Craig Street (following 1993’s Blue Light ’til Dawn), Wilson was being hailed as the new empress of jazz singers, mentioned in the same breath as such iconic vocalists as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter. In a rave review, DownBeat declared New Moon Daughter an instant classic and awarded it five stars. The reviewer praised Wilson’s "warmly inviting and authentic voice,” and her “genius” in reinterpreting the Great American Songbook.
Few other vocalists would have the audacity to tackle Billie Holiday’s anthemic “Strange Fruit,” and yet Wilson’s own emotive version stands apart from the original. Add in the blues of Robert Johnson’s “32-20,” The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville” and a jaw-dropping cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” all rendered with deep, dark tones and seductive intent, and you have one of the most potent recordings of the ‘90s. In her Exit Zero Jazz Festival debut, Wilson will rekindle that magic of that recording from 30 years ago.
The Sound: Intimate, sensuous and swinging, New Moon Daughter also finds Wilson wrapping her smoky, honey-toned voice around jazz, blues and pop classics, including Son House’s mournful “Death Letter,” Hoagy Carmichael’s classic “Skylark” and a tender, heartbreaking cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” And they are all delivered with Wilson’s signature all-knowing sense of cool allure.
Sunday, November 9 @ Clemans Theater for the Arts - Gabriella Cavassa (12:00pm & 1:50pm)
Sunday, November 9 @ Carney's Main Room - Brass Queens (11:00am & 1:20pm), Joslyn & The Sweet Compression (3:10pm & 5:10pm)
Sunday, November 9 @ Carney's Other Room - Marel Hidalgo (12:10pm & 2:00pm), Imani Record All-Stars (4:30pm).
The Exit Zero Jazz Festival debuted in November 2012 in the national historic landmark city of Cape May, a picturesque beach town on the very southern tip of New Jersey. The Festival takes place twice a year, Spring and Autumn, in Cape May.
The Festival is a 3-day musical feast featuring international touring artists performing on the David O. Clemans Stage in Cape May Convention Hall. Generally, 4-5 performances take place each day of the Festival in Convention Hall, with the first performance generally kicking off at Noon.
In addition to the performances in Cape May Convention Hall, a full lineup of performances take place simultaneously in the bars/restaurants of Cape May, and do not miss the New Orleans style Second Line parades each Festival. The joy of the Exit Zero Jazz Festival is in the many different cultures and varied styles of music bursting from the Festival stages.
