From Tri-C JazzFest to Jobs

Five minutes before showtime, Nina Lunde is making sure the microphones are all set. The William M. Weiss Foundation Next Gen Stage needs to be just so for the 47th annual Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, presented by KeyBank.  

The scene looks like controlled chaos. Stagehands are bustling here and there, trying not to trip over thick lines of cable. It’s hot out, and the clock is ticking. A final check. The backline looks good. The chairs are in a perfectly straight line that matches the layout sheet. Someone checks the mics — “Testing, one, two, testing.”  

“We literally put everything together,” Lunde said. “You come for the performances, but you don’t realize how much work it takes to set it up.”  

"Behind the scenes, JazzFest is an opportunity to gain hands-on work experience, network with industry professionals and, in some cases, land jobs. "

Lunde is one of many Recording Arts and Technology (RAT) students at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C®) working as stagehands at this year’s JazzFest. As the artists begin their set, the students mill about, catching their breath. In about 45 minutes, they will tear down what they just set up and do it all again.  

For three days each year, Tri-C JazzFest takes over Playhouse Square and the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 14th Street. Patrons see a giant party — a place to eat and drink, shop and celebrate one of America’s most loved musical idioms. 

But many Tri-C students have a different view. Behind the scenes, JazzFest is an opportunity to gain hands-on work experience, network with industry professionals and, in some cases, land jobs. This Tri-C event is a hub where students rub shoulders with touring professionals while learning what music-industry work looks and feels like. And it goes beyond the music industry. Students in programs as far-flung as graphic design, business, photography and culinary arts gain valuable experiences and insights through JazzFest. 

William Horschke is an adjunct in the RAT program and director of technical production at JazzFest. If you see someone working at the festival, there is a good chance that person is or was a Tri-C student. 

“When we include all the student stagehands and interns, from the RAT department specifically, we are probably around 15. When we include students who are studying other disciplines around the College, the number grows higher. When we include recent graduates and former Tri-C students, the number grows significantly, as many of our staff are working professional Tri-C graduates,” he said.  

Making the Scene 

Marc “Marky Ray” Poritsky — aka the Rock and Roll Mercenary — has been teaching in the RAT program for 20 years as a member of the adjunct faculty. He holds his Concert Technical Production class at the Beachland Ballroom & Tavern, where the learning is hands-on and involves loading bands in and out, running sound, etc.  

“This class has essentially staffed the entire Northeast Ohio music scene,” Poritsky said.  

Poritsky started working at JazzFest in 2015 and, today, he is in charge of outdoor-stage production. Each year, he has crew spots to fill. 

For some of the spots, he hires former Tri-C students who now work at local music venues like the Agora Theatre, Jacobs Pavilion or Brothers Lounge. He reserves other spots for current Tri-C students, who can test what they learned in the Beachland classroom while effectively apprenticing with alumni who have done the work before. 

“In that class, we give them a skill set that they can use at JazzFest, which is an intense three days,” Poritsky said. 

JazzFest is next level. Starting on a Thursday, the team sets up the outdoor portion of the festival. The crew unfurls and sets up the two outdoor stages at Playhouse Square. They roll out cable. They set up the P.A. They install the lighting and other equipment. They unpack and inventory rental gear from Woodsy’s Music in Kent.  

“We have a schedule. Everything is to time,” Poritsky said. 

For the next two nights, the team tears down and sets up, tears down and sets up. They will sleep a bit and eat, occasionally. Then tear down and set up some more. After the last act on Saturday night, they will work into Sunday morning, doing the final teardown and packing up, like a film of Thursday running in reverse. 

During all of this, there is a kind of job interview and networking going on. 

“Playhouse Square is the purview of IATSE Local 27, so we work with their people,” Poritsky said. “We bring in our students and work together setting up the stages. 

“Often, at the end of the festival, the Local 27 people are so impressed with the students that they offer them employment, which is incredible.” 

Returning students who already work in the industry often bring current students to the attention of their co-workers and hiring managers. After exchanging contact information, those connections can lead to jobs at the Agora or Rock & Roll Hall of Fame or to placement on the work-call list for Jacobs Pavilion. 

As a RAT student, Aurora Wentz worked as an intern at JazzFest. She’s now part of the audiovisual team at the Rock Hall, and at JazzFest, she oversees sound and production at the William M. Weiss Foundation Next Gen Stage, allowing Poritsky to focus on the SeibertKeck Insurance Stage. 

Dominic Alberto first worked as a student intern at JazzFest in 2022, the same year he graduated from the College’s RAT program. Today, he is a freelance sound engineer and stagehand, working for music venues around Greater Cleveland like Jacobs Pavilion, the Agora Theatre and Globe Iron. He sometimes works audiovisual for corporate events, too.  

Sitting backstage at the festival, he said, “JazzFest is a great introduction to what a music festival feels like, with the safeguard of being less punishing. It’s a real festival, and you’ve got the same responsibilities, but you also have support behind you.”  

Getting the Picture 

Across Euclid Avenue, Alundis Hayes adjusts the camera equipment strapped to his shoulders. The College hired him as one of the photographers for JazzFest this year. 

Hayes first shot the festival as a photography student at Tri-C. He enrolled at the College in the fall of 2024. The following spring, he noticed that students in a graphic design course were making JazzFest posters.  

“I really wanted to photograph the festival,” Hayes said.  

As luck would have it, JazzFest organizers were looking to involve a student in festival photography. He was brought on to take pictures for the JazzFest Academy, a JazzFest-adjacent music performance program for kids 12 to 18. This year, the JazzFest team brought him back as a freelance photographer.  

“I also started getting more gigs, like concert photography. I do band pictures for the Bedford High School marching band,” Hayes said. 

Hayes finished his associate degree this spring. He currently works full time as a data tax specialist while side-gigging as a photographer with plans to pursue a bachelor’s in communications at Cleveland State University. Eventually, he’d like to use his photography skills in public relations. 

Beyond Jazz 

JazzFest is, of course, more than just jazz. It includes a promenade of local vendors, family activities and more. This year, the festival even had a “rage room,” courtesy of the Yo! Crash Mobile Rage Room.  

Hayes will show you the sights of JazzFest, and Poritsky and his team will make sure the sound is on point. But there are appetizing smells, too.  

Food plays an important part at JazzFest, and the Tri-C Hospitality Management program is one of the cooks in that kitchen. This year, Tri-C President Michael A. Baston, J.D., Ed.D., even took a turn in the Tri-C Hospitality Management tent, dubbed the Jazz Kitchen. 

So did Peggy Cruz. She did her fourth JazzFest cooking demonstration this year.  

Cruz owns Cha’Firo Catering & Events, which she founded in 2016. A creative soul with an analytical mind, she started at Tri-C to study accounting. Along the way, she discovered that she was an entrepreneur at heart, and cooking was the way to give expression to her calling. 

“It was a light bulb moment. Cooking was what was in my heart. It was my passion,” Cruz said.  

She completed her culinary degree in 2018. While she didn’t cook at the festival as a student, her Tri-C connections combined with her unique vegan and vegetarian take on Cuban cuisine secured her cooking demo slots in the Hospitality tent post-graduation.  

She has since done similar demonstrations at Tri-C’s Eastern Campus and has gigs in the works for Baldwin Wallace University, Cleveland City Hall and the Cuyahoga County Public Library.  

“That all grew out of JazzFest,” Cruz said. 

As a result, she is making educational outreach a bigger part of the Cha’Firo business model.  

“I talk about the food, a little bit about the history,” she said. “I talk about where to source it. They get a recipe and a sample. I talk a little bit about myself and Tri-C.” 

A Unique Opportunity 

While JazzFest offers opportunities for Tri-C students and graduates from many fields, the College’s RAT program is its beating heart.  

May Vianna, a native of Brazil, initially enrolled in the Jazz Studies program at Tri-C. Along the way, she switched to the RAT program. She got her first taste of JazzFest as a student in 2021. 

Vianna was working in the RAT studio when then-JazzFest Director Terri Pontremoli asked her if she wanted to be an artist host. Vianna said, “Of course.” 

“I didn’t really know what it meant, but I ended up being the point of contact for two big acts,” Vianna said. 

That fateful encounter opened Vianna’s eyes. Like many who want to make it in the music business, her dreams were filled with Grammys and sold-out stadiums, but the music and sound industry — especially in Northeast Ohio — is one of tremendous breadth, from the many clubs to the stagehand unions to international sound companies like Eighth Day Sound (headed by RAT alum Cory Osadciw). And that’s just music. There is also work in theater and television, artist management and more. 

“Working at JazzFest is when I realized that a band needs a tour manager, that a band needs a distributor, a PR person. That’s when I saw that there were so many areas in the music industry,” Vianna said.  

“One of the bands sent a note to Terri, thanking me. The next year, I was managing the JazzFest artist hosts.”  

Around the same time, Vianna was offered an internship at the Rock Hall. Drawing on her can-do attitude and experiences at JazzFest, Vianna parlayed the internship into a part-time job there. After she finished the RAT program in 2022, the Rock Hall hired her as a full-time audio engineer. 

Vianna, Hayes, Cruz, Wentz, Alberto — these are just a few of the many students whose experiences at JazzFest directly or indirectly informed their careers. Even among the many ways Tri-C shepherds its students through education to jobs, JazzFest is unique. It’s a three-day laboratory where students from across a spectrum of disciplines can test skills against the real world, gain insights into their fields, make life-changing contacts, and be exhausted when it’s all said and done. Like jazz itself, the beginning doesn’t always predict the end, but the joy is in the journey.  

September 02, 2026

JARROD ZICKEFOOSE, 216-987-4750 or jarrod.zickefoose@tri-c.edu