ColdFusion not maintaining connection to Azure DW

Our ColdFusion 2016 Enterprise server (Windows Server 2012 R2) is not maintaining connections to an Azure Data Warehouse db. The first Azure query on a page takes a second or more to run. Subsequent Azure queries on the same page take a fraction of a second, e.g.:

test1 (Datasource=azureDev, Time=3485ms, Records=1) in D:\DW\dwtest\CF2016\bob\azureAdhoc.cfm @ 12:10:12.012

select count(*) cnt from dimpatient where name like 'smith%' and birthdate >'2014-02-01' 

test2 (Datasource=AzureDev, Time=125ms, Records=3) in D:\DW\dwtest\CF2016\bob\azureAdhoc.cfm @ 12:10:12.012

select * from dbo.dimPatientMergeStatus 

test3 (Datasource=AzureDev, Time=172ms, Records=1) in D:\DW\dwtest\CF2016\bob\azureAdhoc.cfm @ 12:10:13.013

select * from dbo.dimPatient where MedicalRecordNumber = '2000000' 

test4 (Datasource=azureDev, Time=281ms, Records=1) in D:\DW\dwtest\CF2016\bob\azureAdhoc.cfm @ 12:10:13.013

select count(*) cnt from dimpatient where name like 'jones%' and birthdate >'2004-02-01' 

It seems apparent that CF is taking extra time to make the connection for the first query on each page every time the page is called. We've tried with various queries and re-arranging their order and always end up with the same result.

We are connecting to Azure using the latest MS jdbc driver (mssql-jdbc-6.2.2.jre8.jar). and Maintain Connections is checked. We first attempted to connect using the built in Microsoft SQL Server driver but kept getting this error:

Connection verification failed for data source: AzureDev2

java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver]Error fetching requested database meta-data info.

We do not see this issue when we run the queries in SSMS.

Any suggestions as to how to fix this?

Thanks

Bob