- The visibility of Finnish jazz will be increased in Pori Jazz because it is world class standard, promises the new artistic director Tuomas Kallio. Already he has had to answer the question of what will change and what will stay the same in Pori Jazz with the previous artistic director Jyrki Kangas stepping down from his role. Tuomas Kallio will be supported by his colleagues, Markus Partanen and Teppo Mäkynen, each with their own field of responsibilities. Markus Partanen will be in charge of international jazz and Teppo Mäkynen together with Tuomas Kallio will look after Finnish jazz production.

Jyrki Kangas will continue under new title senior advisor in a consulting role to continue developing the festival venues, services and surroundings. This way his long experience will still benefit Pori Jazz and his networks can be used in the creation of the festival.

Some of Kallio's new plans include having completely new productions or pieces for each year in the festival, one way to make this happen is to provide and artist in residence system for composers. He also desires the festival's profile to be more accurate and more visible, allow for packaging or combining of different programs and performances. Kirjurinluoto is a working concept which is easy to continue and to refine according to Kallio. Also the evening and night time concerts could use more development in the future. The work must consider different musical target groups and styles.

The way the work itself gets done is bound to change when the workgroup begins its task but the framework of the festival and Kirjurinluoto as a venue will remain according to Kallio. Jazz is being played and written all over the world, it no longer hails from any specific country says Partanen. Both Kallio and Partanen agree that the program formations such as Ultra Music Meeting must be kept intact.