The concerts will run from July 17-19th at Pori’s Kirjurinluoto venue, with Smith’s performance scheduled for the Saturday.
“It’s rare to find an equivalent icon to Smith in the music world and it has been nice to notice from the first comments that her arrival in Pori is a big thing for fans,” says Pori Jazz’s artistic director, Mikkomatti Aro. Smith played three sold-out concerts in Helsinki and Tampere last July.
The debut album of twenty-one-year old Mac Miller, Blue Slide Park, went public in 2011, shooting to number one on the Billboard sales charts in the first week of its release. He is expected to draw plenty of fans to the western Finnish town on July 18.
“If Patti Smith is a living legend, Mac Miller is a 21-year-old rapper from a new generation. We need to ensure that our programme also has some youthful vigour,” says Aro.
Naturally, many jazz groups will also feature over the course of the festival. On Friday July 18 Helsinki ambient-jazz band Oddarrang will grace the stage and on Saturday the audience will be treated to New York's Marc Cary Focus Trio and a Finnish-Norwegian collaboration, the Alexi Tuomarila Trio.
The rest of the lineup will be finalised and released during the winter. The various stages at the Kirjurinluoto arena will host some 12-14 different artists and bands daily over the course of the festival.