Festival year 1987
Shortage of money didn’t mean that the festival would have started to narrow down the repertoire. Famous, good musicians were seen as attraction bringing people to the festival. Therefore almost all the greatest touring musicians were in Pori that year; Miles Davis, Manhattan Transfer, Stan Getz, B.B. King, Cab Calloway, Hugh Masekela, Courtney Pine, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ahmad Jamal… As a result there were over a thousand musicians in town playing at the 77 scheduled concerts of which about 40 were presented as free of charge.
A lot was at stake but the festival managed to fulfill all the great expectations the organizers had. Starting on July 4th and closing on 12th the festival proved out to be the greatest ever with abundant repertoire and high artistic level. Everything went as planned and the future seemed bright for the festival due to the strengthened financial situation.
Approximately 60 000 people attended the festival. Kirjurinluoto was the favorite venue and on Friday there were more than 12 000 people on the island listening to Manhattan Transfer.
The success wasn’t a sheer coincidence aided by fair weather and huge stars performing. Over the years the organization had learned from their mistakes and slowly but surely turned into quite an experienced production team with knowledge of such things as artistic direction, skillful marketing, innovations and building brand. Luck of course was required but as demonstrated by previous years the lady hadn’t always favored the festival. In 1987 she did.
