Festival year 1985
The Finnish press noted the festival already during the winter as the posters designed by Erkki Ruuhinen were voted as the finest artistic posters that year.
20th Pori Jazz expanded the festival up to nine days starting on July 6th and closing on 14th. Almost all of the concerts were located by the riverside. Two old industrial halls inside the Pori Cotton Mill were transformed one as a jazz club and the other as an exhibition hall. An old and quite beautiful riverside storehouse was renovated and thus Café Jazz was born and the lawn of Pori City Hall also became a concert venue.
The festival attracted some 60 000 people. 20th anniversary was celebrated by an exhibition at the Satakunta Museum displaying among other things pictures, brochures, articles, objects and documents from each festival year. After the festival the exhibition was catalogued and filed at the museum.
To answer the question “What is Pori Jazz?” Jyrki Kangas wrote in the festival brochures greeting article: “It’s the same it’s always been. It’s independent, daring, incredible, free association of regular jazz devotees from all around Finland.” And it’s still the same after all these years.
