Dear Editor,

In response to the Cork reader whose recent letter (March/April 2003) expressed dismay at Up North! festival’s ‘dublin-centric’ programming and coverage: You mentioned both the Crash Ensemble and the Whispering Gallery as the main culprits here. The Whispering Gallery has provided a stage in Dublin for quite a number of excellent Cork musicians over the past four years and is committed to providing a forum for experimentation for all Irish artists working with sound. Without such active collaborators as Cork’s Triskle Arts Centre we would have been unable to programme many of the international artists whom we have toured across this island; and members of the WG regularly perform in Cork. As far as the Crash Ensemble is concerned, it should be pointed out that it was in many ways the efforts of this excellent team which made this venture possible in the first place.

Jürgen Simpson
Dublin 8

p.s. I might point out that two of my fondest memories as a performer were in Cork and included my first encounter with live performance at Cork’s ‘Intermedia’ festival in 1996 and then the strangest experience as a guest of that Cork band ‘the nine wassies from bainne’ for a live soundtrack of Jan Svankmayer’s Dr Faustus!