Declan Sinnott, founding member of Horslips and Moving Hearts, long-term producer of Mary Black’s music, and collaborator with Christy Moore, has released his first solo album and is currently on an extensive solo tour.

Lau's new album, Race the Loser, is out and the band will be playing two concerts in Ireland in October.

The Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge has an exciting season of music coming up, featuring Sharon Shannon, Gerry Diver's Speech Project, Scullion and the Gloaming, the Unusual History of Ether, Julie Feeney, Mick Coady's Synergy

A Welsh MP is seeking ideas for a folk music manifesto. Could a manifesto for traditional music in Ireland be developed?

Rónán Ó Snodaigh of Kíla is doing a series of five concerts in Whelan’s in Dublin to celebrate his five solo albums.

Mossy Nolan is playing at the Global Green area of the Electric Picnic this Saturday, 1 September at 2pm. Here he is performing at the Purple Sessions in Boyles of Slane earlier this summer.

As part of the Sligo Live festival this autumn, the Hawk's Well will host two musical double-bills, featuring Fidil and I Draw Slow on 26 October, and Lau and Buille on 27 October.

From his memoir Adventures of a Waterboy, published recently by Lilliput Press, Mike Scott here describes his early encounters with Irish traditional music, and how the fateful move to Spiddal and 'the Celtic dreamtime' came about

Johnny Moynihan of Planxty fame will be among the first performers at a new weekly folk club in the Grand Social's Ballroom space in Dublin.

Bowerbird is a programme over two nights of performances by musicians including Andy Irvine, Martin Carthy, Adrian Crowley and Sam Amidon.

The four-piece from Mayo and Dublin, Tupelo, are about to embark on a European tour and have released a single, 'Irishman', from their 2011 album Dirty Money to promote it; while the duo from Ballyfermot, the Feekers, have just re

Galway singer-songwriter Seán Tyrrell is on a short tour to coincide with the release of his new album Walker of the Snow which features versions of 'Can't help but wonder where I'm bound', 'You are my sunshine'

Citing as influences Andy Irvine, Joni Mitchell, Seán Tyrrell, Joan Baez, and Anne Briggs, singer and musician, Mossy Nolan has released his first album packaged and designed in a most original style.

Produced by Gerry O’Beirne and engineered by Trevor Hutchinson, The Plum Tree and The Rose is a departure for McQuaid in that most of the songs on it she wrote herself.

Acts confirmed for the small Kildare pub for the year ahead include Johnny Duhan, Ger Wolfe, Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart, Peter Mulvey, John Spillane, Otis Gibbs, Woodbine, Richard Gillewitz, Sara Grey and Kieron Means, and Jeff and Vida.

Eddi Reader is about to begin her fourth annual Irish tour, performing with John Douglas and Boo Hewerdine on guitars and Alan Kelly on accordion, in Dublin, Clare, Cork, Wexford, Kerry, Mayo, Sligo and Kildare.

Allison's Folk Club will be returning to the Ranelagh Arts Centre, Dublin 6, this Thursday, 16 February, starting at 8pm. This year’s Club opens with the band Foley's Woodshed.

The second concert in a new series curated by pianist, accordionist and percussionist Francesco Turrisi will feature sean nós singer Róisín El Safty and the fiddle player Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh.

Hearing Lisa Hannigan, James Vincent McMorrow and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh in a cave in County Cork, Aoife Flynn is reminded of the simple intimacies in that link thousands of years of music.

Playing solo brings a whole set of musical problems. How do you balance the musical elements? How do you develop ideas?

The music of Tarab brings together Mediterranean and Irish music traditions – reminiscent of medieval Irish travel stories, but also more than an imaginary tale.

Traditional Irish music sessions were once drink-heavy affairs, now it's all pints of water and cups of coffee.

Ciaran Carson cherishes the moments when listening is important.

In the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland, visitors are sometimes frustrated because they speak Irish to locals and are responded to in English.

Peter Rosser finds how American folk music revivals have been bound to the country’s social history

Across folk, classical, pop and exploratory music, the sense of exile from Eden is key to the progress of British music in the twentieth century, writes Rob Young.

A rootless generation needs an updated idea of folk music, by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

In the early part of the twentieth century, a young musician named Natalie Curtis began drawing attention to the music of Native Americans and African Americans, publishing collections, organising concerts and advocating their traditions as

The melody of ‘Danny Boy’ has its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century in the North of Ireland. An old harper’s melody was collected and embellished to make the air that we know today, but by who?

A new generation of musicians and singers is pulling the English folk scene alongside its Irish and Scottish neighbours, pointing to a new era of collaboration – and perhaps even the healing of old wounds, writes Toner Quinn

The direct impact the new digital culture is having on music, in terms of access, dissemination and copyright, is well documented, but the indirect impact less so.

A group of prominent Irish emigrant traditional musicians in The Bedford Arms pub, Arlington Road, Camden Town, London, c.

"Memory is more of a narrative, a plausible story, than an exact recording of events or circumstances", finds Ciaran Carson in the thirteenth article of his series on traditional music.

He was a cantankerous eccentric who stressed that the Irish language and music were inseparable. Richard Henebry should not be forgotten, writes Ciaran Carson