Healdsburg Renaissance Woman, Anne Berry, Creates Sweet Music

The haunting echoes of Candle in the Window fade away into the silence. We’ve just listened to the beautiful song with its haunting lyrics. Both the music and lyrics were written by Healdsburg Renaissance woman, Ann Berry.

The song was sung in public for the first time at the launch of Tuesday Morning Memories, the anthology written by the members of the Healdsburg Senior Writing Project at their .

Berry read an excerpt of her soon-to-be-published book, The Red Cabin Chronicles. The excerpt is included in the anthology. Her book is an account of her gold mining adventures during 1970s, when she and her then-husband Jody, earned their living as gold miners.

Berry, 60, is a pianist, piano teacher, avid hiker, writer, singer-songwriter, fine artist and craftswoman. She also has been a farm worker, carpenter, water-wheel designer, sandal-maker and more.

A gold miner?  Berry spent years earning her living at gold mining. She still has a gold nugget, its rough-hewn heart-shape strung on a chain. When she talks of gold, her eyes sparkle like the precious metal.

“I have gold fever. I’d get out there and do it again in a minute,” the dark-haired, blue-eyed woman readily admitted.

Berry is also a busy outdoorswoman.

“I love the outdoors,” she said. “If I’m not writing, composing or playing music, I’m outside.”

calls her several times a day and she strides out on the long walks that keep her slender body in great physical shape.

“I discovered ‘the Ridge’ early on when I moved to Healdsburg, and every day since, that’s how I start my day,” Berry said. “I walk, rain or shine, with few exceptions.”

This morning she saw a fox with a big, beautiful brush of a tail. Her delight in the natural world is palpable.

“He was very inquisitive,” she said with a grin. She’s also seen a bobcat with kittens, as well as other animals that call the area home.

Berry’s husband, Bennett Friedman, is a music teacher at Santa Rosa Junior College and a jazz saxophonist. Music is integral to both of their lives. She has been a piano teacher in Healdsburg for 20 years.

In addition to her current music students, who range from 5 to 87 years old, she writes music. Her latest song, the aforementioned Candle in the Window, was inspired by the stories shared during the Tuesday sessions that culminated with the publication of Tuesday Morning Memories.

Firewater is one of Berry’s three current groups. She confesses it has nothing to do with alcohol. She also plays with a jazz band and a band that plays an eclectic assortment of music.

Berry began to play the piano as a six-year-old and her first adult purchase was her piano—it has accompanied her wherever she’s moved. She taught music in a one-room schoolhouse on the Salmon River, where she wrote the music and composed lyrics for school plays.

Her father, a 4-star general, also lives in Healdsburg. She has a grown son and two grandchildren.

The upright piano has a pride of place in the living room. Scattered on windowsills, tables and other flat surfaces are rocks, antlers, a tile trivet and a lily in a bowl, reflective of her varied tastes and interests. She found the antler at Lake Sonoma, the rocks in several places, she handcrafted the trivet, and she picked the lily from her garden.

She is “always composing.”  Her compositions were featured by the bands she accompanied. Berry has written dozens of songs but has actually chosen to record only about ten of them. She pulls the lyrics from her life experiences.

The Red Cabin Chronicles nears completion. Berry is actively working through the second edit. The book will include her illustrations.

Berry continues to write, compose, teach and hike every day. To listen to Candle in the Window on Sound Cloud click here.