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CLAUDIA'S HISTORY BIO,
PHOTOS, AWARDS CLAUDIA'S MUSIC HEAR
THE CD CLAUDIA'S
NEWSLETTER CLAUDIA'S SHOW CONTACT
FOR BOOKING CLAUDIA
IS PROUD |
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NYGAARD'S
NEWSLETTER
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WINTER 2004/2005
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IN GRINDELWALD,
SWITZERLAND |
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I have never spent Christmas in Europe before, so this was quite a different holiday for me. I performed at a wonderful little cafe in Bretagne (Brittany) on the coast of France close to England. The town is called Ploubalay, and it is a tourist destination near Normandy where we stormed the beaches during World War II. (They have a monument to two American flyers who lost their lives when their plane went down.) It was my first time to perform in French, and since people laughed at the right times when I told my little stories, I think I did OK... unless of course they were laughing at my French. My boyfriend Jimmy was performing outside London, so we met in Paris afterwards, and took the train to Interlaken, Switzerland. Then we took another train to Grindelwald, a ski area in the Alps that had a gondola that took us up even higher. That's where I took these photos. It was like standing on top of the world! |
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We returned to Paris for Christmas. Since it was pretty cold, we spent most of our time at the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay (Impressionists museum). However we did stroll the Champs-Elysess on Christmas Day, and made it over to the Eiffel Tower. |
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This was my second trip to Europe in 2004. Scroll down and you will see a link to learn all about the trip I made last summer to Lithuania and Norway. But first, here is the most exciting thing that happened to me this year...
THEN TO CALIFORNIA...
From Kerrville, I headed out to northern California to play. I had a great time performing again in with my dear friend and former partner Chuck McCabe at Espresso Gardens in my old hometown of San Jose. This was our third year to do our " one-day reunion tour" and each time we have more folks there. Brad Kava from the San Jose Mercury-News gave us a great writeup, and I'm so appreciative. I also really enjoyed doing a show at a new venue for me, the Sutter Creek Theatre. It is an old theater built in 1919 for silent films, and the acoustics are wonderful!
Sutter
Creek itself is such a cute town too. It has been restored to it's original
charm and features lots of great restaurants and shopping. If you go there,
stop and have a coffee at the Sutter Creek Coffee Company, and tell Anne
& Tom hi for me. They are old classmates of mine, and I had a great
time staying with them while I was passing through.
A
MISSION TRIP TO LITHUANIA
West End Lithuania
Mission Team
Top Row: Zach Laylor,
Mark Allen
Middle Row:Allison Key, Dare Oseas, Claudia Nygaard
Bottom Row: Diane Lancaster, Martha Harbuck
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August found me headed to Lithuania with other members of my church. We held a camp for kids that attend our sister church in Vilnius, and then did a short performance tour, singing at other Methodist churches in the country. It was quite an experience and I'm really glad I went. I met some incredible young people and saw some sights that have changed my life forever, particularly a concentration camp called "The 9th Fort", and a wonderfully inspirational place called the "Hill Of Crosses". One part of the tour I could have done without however. The last night, we stopped the bus to "answer the call of nature" and I went running down the bank of the road headed for the privacy of the tall grass. Unfortunately there was no moon and it was pitch dark. I couldn't see a thing, including the Soviet subterranean irrigation well I fell into! I'm still feeling some sore ribs six months later. |
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NORWAY, THE LAND OF MY ANCESTORS...
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I have wanted to see Norway since I was a little girl. I heard all about it from my Grandfather, and since all four of my grandparents were of Norwegian descent, I've been very curious to find out more about my "tribe". I was thrilled to meet some cousins I recently discovered I had over there, and they really went out of their way to show me around. My father's mother's family took me to the Meldahl Valley. The photos you see below are the view from the homestead where my Great, Great Grandparents lived. The cousins told me that my Great Grandmother Ingeborg was a singer as well, and that she stood on the bow of the ship as she sailed for America, and sang a song of farewell as tears rolled down her face. The photos above I took aboard a cruise ship that I took from Trondheim down to Bergen, the area where my father's father was born. |
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When I left Norway, I flew to Paris for a couple days to see old friends. My friend Eric Vincent is a wonderful singer/songwriter who tours all over the world. He and his wife Claudine live on this incredible houseboat, and kindly invited me to join them for dinner. They also invited my good friend Rosemary Lou, a fabulous French singer with a voice reminiscent of Joan Baez, and Georges Moustaki. George is a songwriter who wrote many songs for Edith Piaf. |
George,
Rosemary, & Me aboard the "Madura",