The sixth annual Galway Sessions brings together the common cultures of Ireland and Scotland. The week-long event has an expansive programme featuring concerts, folk-club gigs, open-air events, and a fun, music-packed session trail. This week Lisa Regan looks at some of the acts and highlights of this year's event.

Galway Sessions 2008 will play host to over 100 events throughout the 'City of the Tribes', including big stage concerts at the Salthill Hotel, Róisín Dubh and Black Box Theatre, the very popular folk club gigs at the Listener's Club in the Crane Bar, set dancing and ceilidhe in the expanse of Monroe's Tavern and the Black Box and the Western Hotel. Great sessions will take place throughout the week, Sunday 15 to Sunday 22 June, in well-known watering holes such as Taaffees, Tigh Coili's, the 'piano bar' in Tigh Neachtain, Murty Rabbittes, Arus na nGael, Massimo's and many other venues.

Julie Fowlis.

Major acts this year include Eddi Reader and her band in the Salthill Hotel, Galway and also from Scotland, Dick Gaughan, Julie Fowlis, Rachel Hare, Kris Dreever, Arthur Jones, the Donaldson Brothers and the Kinlochard Ceili Band. Irish acts include the Alan Kelly Band, Juliet Turner, Dordan, Sean Tyrell, John Faulkner, Noelie McDonnell, Liz and Yvonne Kane and Mirella Murray, Tommy Keane and Jacqui McCarthy, Róisín Elsafty, Fergal Scahill, Lillis O'Laoire and Jackie Uí Chionna and the Tulla Ceili Band.

"This year's programme will explore the shared cultural heritage of Scotland and Ireland and each event will feature acts both local and Scottish. This will lend a very different flavour to this year's festival and we are looking forward to it with great excitement," says Festival Director, Mick Crehan.

The festival opens on Sunday 15 June with one of the most intriguing of Irish female songwriters Juliet Turner. Although no stranger to Galway, this show will be the Meteor Award winner's first time playing at The Galway Sessions. On the night, she will be performing songs from her new album 'People have Names'. Dordan and the first of the Scots acts to appear at the festival, Rachel Hair and Peter Francie, will appear on Monday 16 June.

Galway's Dordan are Mary Bergin (tin-whistle), Kathleen Loughnane (harp) and Dearbhail Standún (fiddle), who have won widespread acclaim over the years for their beautiful performances of Irish traditional and baroque music. Rachel Hair, from the village of Ullapool in the Scottish highlands, is one of Scotland's finest players of the Clarsach. Of mixed heritage (her mother being Irish), Rachel veers towards a more contemporary style of harp playing with inflections of jazz, classical, funk, rock and pop.

The divas of Scots Gaidhlig and Irish sean-nós singing, Julie Fowlis and Róisín Elsafty, take to the stage, on Thursday 17 June. Julie Fowlis is a talented singer and instrumentalist from North Uist, a small island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. She is the BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year 2008 and in a few short years has taken the music scene by storm. She sings in Scottish Gaelic and spends her time touring around the world, bringing ancient songs from the Hebridean Islands to new audiences. She is an accomplished musician as well - playing Highland bagpipes, small pipes, whistles and three waltzes on the one row melodeon.

She was publicly voted Gaelic Singer of the Year 2007 at the Scots Trad Music Awards and her album 'cuilidh', produced with husband Eamon Doorley was voted Album of the Year at the same awards. Many Galwegians will remember her sell-out concert at last year's Galway Arts Festival and will also be familiar with former Galway resident Eamon, who used to play in sessions in the Crane Bar and Tigh Coili.

Róisín Elsafty is a sean-nós singer from Connemara. Her biggest musical influence is her mother, the singer Treasa Ní Cheannabháin, with whom she has recorded a CD. Róisín won the premier award for traditional singing at the Oireachtas in 2002, and has recently performed at the Open House Festival in Belfast and Celtic Connections in Glasgow. Through their singing and teaching, Róisín and her mother have been to the forefront in developing sean-nós singing among a new generation in Connemara.

Alan Kelly and his Band with their special guest Kris Drever will play the final gig of The Galway Sessions 2008 in the Róisín Dubh on Sunday 22 June.