The best of educators are by
their nature dreamers, because they focus not on the here and now but on
shaping generations to come. That
engagement with the future might explain why they accept payment for their work
that is often inadequate for their own needs in the present. I recently wrote
about Chris Bischof, the founder of Eastside College Preparatory School in
East Menlo Park, California, who is a paradigm of this commitment. I've lately come across another: Anne
Crowden, founder of the Crowden School
in Berkeley, California, which is for young musicians.
Last month, I attended a fund-raising reception for the
Crowden School and Music Center. I
went mainly because of my fondness for the reception's hosts, not at all knowing what to expect. I got a beautiful earful: a string
quartet of eighth-graders and recent alums from the school playing a work of a
seventeen-year-old who graduated from it three years ago. I don't know whether it was the
acoustics of the hosts' living room, the beauty of the composition, or the
sheer virtuosity of those very young players—likely a combination of the
three—but I have never before been so immersed in and moved by a chamber-music
performance, literally to tears. I
decided that I had to find out more about Crowden.
I found a gem of education, figuratively sitting at my
doorstep; I am sure that I have driven by it a thousand times without noticing
it in plain sight. On my visit, I
encountered several dozen fourth- through eighth-grade pupils in their morning
music lessons, practicing in ensembles.
Even in practice sessions, those nine- to fourteen-year-olds were
playing as young professionals.
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The Crowden School
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A sextet practicing with a teacher
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On a later visit, I saw the entire student body watching a
performance of the San Francisco-based Alexander String Quartet, one of
frequent guest visits by professional musicians. It was exhilarating to watch: those youngsters were leaning
forward in their seats, intensely absorbing every bow-stroke and fingering of
the Quartet as it played a piece by Schubert.
The school was Anne Crowden's dream and accomplishment. A Scotswoman and concert violinist, she
first played a stint with the Edinburgh String Quartet before joining the famed
Netherlands Chamber Orchestra in Amsterdam. The separations from her young daughter while she was on
tour were too much for her to bear, however, so when a group of friends urged
her to move to the Bay Area and offered to sponsor her for permanent residency
in the United States, she felt in her bones that some good spirit was telling
her something. On that hunch, she
moved to Berkeley in 1965, and was soon playing with the Oakland Symphony
Orchestra, the San Francisco Opera/Ballet Orchestra, and chamber music groups
at universities around the Bay Area.
The move sat well with her, and a bonus was that she was able to be at
home for her daughter.
Teaching music was always in Crowden's blood, a yen that was
only partly satisfied by having a roster of private students and teaching at
summer music schools. Her dream
was really to start a school for young musicians like those she had seen in
London. Such a dream, if it is to
come to fruition, is the point at which dreamers must descend from the ether
and face the constraints of reality—in this case, no money, no site, no
students and no faculty, all wrapped into a giant chicken-egg conundrum. It was an arduous multiyear task,
juggling all those elements until they cohered, but with the help of many local
parents and the endorsement of international musical luminaries, Crowden was
able to complete it. In 1983 she
started Crowden School in a church basement with 13 students in grades six and
seven.
The rest is history.
Crowden School is now in its 30th year, since 1998 occupying
its own spacious building, bought from the Berkeley School District and
lovingly renovated. I believe it
is unique in the United States: a private middle school spanning five grades,
in which pupils spend each morning on instruction in music technique, ensembles
and practice, and each afternoon on academic subjects—English, math, science,
history, foreign languages, etc., combined with music theory and history, and
chorus. Its graduates go on to high school fully
prepared for academic challenges as well as deeply educated in music. Many later become professional
musicians.
The school is part of a subsequently formed umbrella
organization, the Crowden Music Center,
which also provides year-round music instruction and summer music courses for
all ages. Its Outreach program
offers music classes at elementary schools in Berkeley and Oakland. The Center has thus become a
substantial multipurpose resource for the community.
Anne Crowden's original vision for the school was for it to
be tuition-free, so that talent alone would be the criterion for entrance. Alas! that has not come to pass. Of the annual budget of $1.4 million,
about 19%—the totality of charitable donations received—is applied to tuition
assistance for most of its pupils, who otherwise would not be able to attend. The school currently cannot afford to
assist all qualified applicants.
Were charitable donations to increase enough, enrollment could expand from
the present 55 to the school's capacity of 75-80.
At the reception that introduced me to Crowden, the rising
American composer Sam Adams, who graduated from the school 12 years ago, gave a
stirring appreciation of his five formative years there. He also played a stereo recording of
one of his works—a stunning piece of electronic music. His comments, the recording he played,
and a New
York Times review of the recent San Francisco Symphony premiere of his orchestral
work Drift and Providence tell a
compelling story: that musical education at Crowden, although concentrating on
chamber music, is a reflection of its founder's core belief in music's power to
transform the soul, opening it to new vistas.
I am sad that I will never get to meet Anne Crowden; she
died in 2004 at the age of 76. But
I look forward to engaging with her legacy. And I have added her to my personal pantheon of saints of
education, where she joins Chris Bischof.