Step into the Middle Ages this and next weekend at the third annual Utah Renaissance Festival and Fantasy Faire.

Hear minstrels, see jousting contests, dance and other performing arts. There will also be an Olde Marketplace where vendors will sell their wares, including forged swords, exotic jewelry, leather crafts, clothing and food.

Among the many performers such as the Royal Magick of Seattle and the musical group the Glastonbury Duo, Shauna Burns will bring her troupe of musicians to headline May 16-18 at 7 p.m.

Burns, a world-renowned, Celtic-inspired musician, is a graduate of the University of Utah and looks forward to returning to the Beehive State.

"This will be the first Renaissance Festival that we've ever done," said Burns during a phone call from Long Beach, Calif., last week. "I've got friends and family in Utah. So, I'm pretty excited to be coming home."

Burns was born in Florida. Her mother hailed from Heber City and her father was a native Floridian, she said. "My mother was the one who played music all the time. She is a pianist, and the music filled our home."

When Burns hit her teens, she discovered the electronic pop of Depeche Mode.

"And that led me to Bjork, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan," she said. "I decided early on that I wanted to be an alternative-rock musician. But these days alternative-rock means something totally different."

Still, Burns decided to attend the U. and study music when she graduated from high school.

"However, I found I didn't want to play what the professors wanted me to play," she said with a laugh. "And theory killed me. So I changed majors and did music on the side."

She chose anthropology, with a focus on cultural anthropology, which became her musical muse.

"Those classes opened everything up," she said. "I would study Celtic rituals and learn about how the Mongols dealt with birth and death, and then I'd go home and play music on my piano — inspired by what I was studying. It was fascinating."

Burns cut her teeth performing mainly at Cup of Joe downtown. But her wanderlust kicked in and she found herself in Europe with her husband and band drummer, James Clark.

In 2005 and 2006, Burns released two albums, "Every Thought" and "Desert Tune," respectively. The duo moved to Las Vegas and have been there ever since.

Last February, Burns released her third CD, "The Moon and the Fire Circle."

"This CD was very different than the last two on many levels," she said. "It was originally going to be two CDs — one about the sun and the other about the moon. But as I was writing, I realized that the moon songs needed to be balanced out with something lighter. So, I put them together and saved a lot of songs for future releases."