IRELAND may not enjoy tropical weather, but we hardly qualify as a Nordic country either. Even so, there are clearly sufficient geographical and cultural connections between us and the Scandinavian countries that Network North -- the Nordic Council of Ministers' year-long 2002 arts festival -- decided to invite Ireland (and Britain) to take part. The festival's contemporary music component was assigned to Anders Beyer, editor of Nordic Sounds magazine. His trawl for suitable ideas brought him into contact with the Contemporary Music Centre and the Arts Council as well as with Donnacha Dennehy and the Crash Ensemble, whose work impressed him. Ideas were discussed, and the upshot was that the Up North Festival was born, to be presented not anywhere in Scandinavia, but here in Ireland with music from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

The festival, in which Irish and Nordic music will be presented by the Crash Ensemble and Network North, takes place in Dublin from 5 - 8 December 2002 in conjunction with the Project Arts Centre and Music Network. Funding for the festival has been provided by the Arts Council and Network North. Of special interest is that the festival has commissioned works from five Nordic composers (Ejnar Kanding, Hilmar Thordarson, Kent Olofsson, Kimmo Hakola, and Oyvind Torvund) for Irish ensembles to premiere, and four works from Irish composers (Donnacha Dennehy, Kevin Volans, Jennifer Walshe and Ian Wilson) for Nordic ensembles.

The idea and funding for the festival were in place in January 2002 when Fergus Sheil was appointed the Crash Ensemble's new director. He was immediately given the task of planning the festival. For Sheil, the connections between Ireland and the Nordic countries were clear. Ireland shares with the Scandinavian countries a sense of being on the periphery of Europe. Musically, the tradition in these peripheral countries is more sporadic and less continuous than in Germany or France or Italy, whose contemporary music, argues Sheil, 'comes out of a great tradition, often with people rebelling against the tradition. In contrast, Ireland and the Nordic countries have seen an enormous mushrooming in music in the past fifty years or so.

Sheil has just returned to Ireland after four years with Scottish Opera. Prior to leaving Ireland his career had been based on a mix of orchestral and operatic conducting, but also an involvement with contemporary music in the form of studio recordings for radio broadcast on RTE. 'I've been working almost exclusively in opera for the last four years, which has been hugely interesting. But I didn't want to become an exclusively opera person. The opportunity came up to work with Crash, and the opportunity of running this festival. It seems to me that there are a lot of exciting things happening in Dublin now and a lot to be done. And I'm going to do my best for Crash to make a lot happen in the future.'

Right now, the future can be glimpsed at Up North. 'What we've tried to do is find the most interesting people whom we believe we're going to be hearing from in the future, and give Ireland a chance to hear them. One of the statistics about this festival that I am most proud of is that more than half of the music in the festival is twenty-first century. So it's very, very up-to-date.'

The wide variety of participating ensembles will represent new music life in their respective countries. 'We're trying to give an idea of what's going on in Ireland and what's going on in the Nordic countries. So we have a group from Denmark called Contemporánea who do nothing but electro-acoustic music. And then to counterbalance that we've got Avanti from Finland who are doing an exclusively acoustic programme. And then we've a choir -- the Rilke Ensemble -- coming from Sweden, and the Cikada String Quartet from Norway.

'Then from the Irish point of view we've gone for a balance too. As well as Crash doing one of the concerts, we've got Concorde, who are of course very distinguished with a long track record in contemporary music. And then we've got the Callino String Quartet and they're doing an all-contemporary programme for this. And they're a very exciting young quartet. And then Whispering Gallery, who are more experimental and into sound-art and noise-art.' The Contemporary Music Centre is also involved and will be running two afternoon seminars involving the visiting Scandinavian composers and performers.

'And now it's our job to make this festival a great success. We definitely have plans and we would like to make this an annual event.'