Over the years she performed the roles of first violinist in the youth orchestra, the Joey's Ba-Rock Ensemble, leader of the second violins in the Schweizerorchester Frohnleiten and was involved with the school's vocal ensemble and various choirs. Somewhere in-between she also had a short affair with the trumpet and hip-hop dancing. From the age of 10 until 19 she frequented the Musikgymnasium Dreihackengasse in Graz/ Austria where she found out about voice leading, the circle of fifths and counterpoint and had her first experience of being part of a show in the opera house Graz. As part of the Schweizerorchester, the international YMISO orchestra and the music gymasiums's own orchestra she enjoyed trips to Egypt, California, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia.

Whilst the initial classical training formed the main part of her music making for many years, during her time at the Musikgymasium Claudia started to become interested in jazz improvisation, Eastern European folk and Irish trad, musics that were played at folk festivals around the area, and got swept away with the Styrian folk music revolution which took Austria by storm, refilling the valleys and mountains with beautiful yodelling and alpine fiddling.

In 2005, she accidentally emigrated to Ireland to learn some Irish traditional tunes. In her newly found second home Sligo, she got intensely immersed into Irish traditional music. In 2008 she took a trip to India where she started to study North Indian Classical Music with violinist Sukhdev Prasad Mishra. In 2012, Claudia completed her undergraduate arts degree in music and psychology at UCC achieving first class honours, followed by a sponsored masters degree in ethnomusicology which she completed in 2013.

Alongside working on her own solo project which she performed in Ireland, Sweden, Slovenia and Austria, she is currently touring through Switzerland, Germany, Moldova, New York, Austria, Ireland, Italy and the Czech Republic with Austrian string-trio Netnakisum (AUT), Irish Indie band Tucan (IRE), Marti Taern (EST) and Stefan Hedborg (SE) (Claudia Schwab trio), german Jazz legend Matthias Schriefl, the Cork Gamelan orchestra (IRE) and Scottish fiddle-singer Kate Young (Kate and the Austrian).

'Amber Sands' was released in spring 2014. By now a regular feature on Irish and Austrian national radio programmes, 'Amber Sands' has received great reviews from a variety of magazines such as Songlines, MICA Austria, and the FATEA magazine and has been nominated in 3 categories for the Songlines Music Awards 2015.

You can find out more about Claudia on her website.

Amber Sands