Cleveland Jazz Hero
Gabe Pollack might be the most irreplaceable person in the complex and evolving web of jazz players, presenters, cheerleaders and scenemakers in Cleveland and northeast Ohio. Named director of performing arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art in October 2022, during his eight-year tenure as the manager and director of Bop Stop at The Music Settlement – a venue that was voted Best Jazz Club in America by readers of All About Jazz in 2019 – Gabe presented hundreds of musicians in thousands of events.
Faced with the loss of audience at that club during the pandemic, Pollack launched the terrestrial radio program and podcast “Live at the Bop Stop,” which now airs on 25 stations nationwide and has two international affiliates. In 2022, the program won “Best Innovation by a Club, Venue or Festival” from the National Independent Venue Association, an organization Pollack was instrumental in activating. Additional awards won by Bop Stop include Scene Magazine’s Best Jazz Club, Cleveland Hot List’s Best Jazz and Blues, and Cleveland Magazine’s Best of the West “Live Music Venue.”
Gabe’s breadth of vision and enterprise are rare in the music business. What is even more exceptional is that what he’s done has been accomplished with honesty, decency and good faith. Those qualities have too often seemed to disqualify one from a career in the music business, but Pollack, a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music and himself a musician (trumpeter. principally) has an unimpeachable reputation for fair dealing. It’s earned him respect as well as affection.
At the Cleveland Museum of Art he will continue to do what he has always done: build bridges between musicians and presenters, between the music scene and greater Cleveland, and within the music community help to strengthen it and sustain it. Gabe Pollack is a Jazz Hero who makes things happen.
By John Chacona
