San Francisco Classical Voice

She conceived what became the Crowden School as a full elementary/middle school with music at the heart of the curriculum, “to provide a musical training in balance with a first class academic education.” It grew steadily, as ever larger numbers of families enrolled their children and became devoted friends and patrons of the institution. It continues as it was founded, a private school but as Sallie Arens, the school's current president and her friend since 1995, expressed it yesterday, “She had the biggest heart in the world and never turned anyone away.”

Finally, in 1998, with the backing of a true constituency and a board that included prominent musicians and East Bay citizens, the Crowden School purchased Garfield Elementary School on Rose and Sacramento Streets from the city of Berkeley. After moving into this spacious and well laid-out facility, it found stability as a distinguished institution that could develop in new ways. It established itself as a music center, offering after school, weekend, and summer lessons and classes for children not enrolled in the school, and for adults. Although Ms. Crowden retired as school director in 1999, she was re-hired by the board with the title of music director and continued to be active in the school's affairs, not retiring in fact until last June.

Her principles continued to rule the life and policies of the school, including her belief that the students should begin with a string instrument, only later taking up the piano. As a result, in the regular chamber music classes and school recitals, many of the students would perform in one ensemble on their string instrument, and then in another on piano. Every school day begins, in the practice she instituted, with the student body singing as a chorus. Then they would disperse to their different classes, English, math, language, whatever. “Our goal is to teach them how to learn whether through music, writing, mathematics, literature, art or plays so that they will be able to transfer these skills with open, creative minds to anything they wish to pursue,” Anne Crowden wrote in 1993.

The traditions and spirit Anne Crowden imbued in the students and faculty were reflected immediately when the news of her death was given them at 8:00 a.m. yesterday morning. “They instantly put on a memorial concert that included all the faculty and a couple of alumni who happened to be on the premises,” Arens said yesterday. “The kids thought of this themselves. They performed a piece that the kids had played through the year, the Serenade by Joseph Suk, and a piece they always played at the end of the Spring concert, Leroy Anderson's “Fiddle Faddle.” It was an impromptu tribute.”

Born and raised in Scotland, Ms. Crowden studied at Edinburgh University and the Royal Academy of Music in London. She had extensive experience as a violinist in international chamber groups such as the Edinburgh String Quartet and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, she performed for the BBC and for the Arts Council of Great Britain, and she played extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area as a soloist and in chamber ensembles.

Ms. Crowden lived in the United States from 1965 onward. She served on the faculties of Stanford University, Sonoma State University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the University of California, Davis (among other things as a member of its Resident Quartet), and most recently taught chamber music at the University of California at Berkeley for many years. She was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and in 1997 received the Heidi Castleman Award from Chamber Music America for excellence in music education.

None of the above conveys in the least her influence on the musical life of the Bay Area, which is almost literally incalculable. Trying to make a list of the musicians she taught is a hopeless task, because no one (except Anne herself, who never forgot a student) could possibly remember them all. It is hard to think of a Bay Area ensemble with any strings in it at all that doesn't owe something to her work and her love.

She is survived by her daughter, Deirdre Cooper, and by four grandchildren in London. A musical tribute is being planned. The Anne Crowden Fund at the Crowden Musical Center is suggested for contributions made in her memory.