Meet Göran Berg and "Sycamore Strings”

Göran Berg grew up in Strängnäs, where he and his family were regular attendants in the famous Cathedral, where he discovered the power of music.
 
His Sycamore Strings has played in many churches including Grace Cathedral, where I first heard them in the UN 70 Celebration in June 2015. They have also toured in Sweden.

He has now lived and worked in Livermore for more than 30 years. Surrounded by two National Laboratories and dozens of vineyards  and wineries, his music academy has brought hope and inspiration to young children with a talent for music. What is his story? How did he end up here? I asked him some questions and he responded promptly:
 
Where were you born and what was your first meeting with music? Tell us about your family and your music education and early career in Sweden.
 
I was born in Strängnäs in 1948. My parents came from very simple backgrounds living in the countryside. My mother was the youngest of five and my father number three in a family of eight children. My parents gave me a good upbringing with few resources but lots of love, strict budgets, and homemade solutions to life’s necessities. I was their only child.
 
Strängnäs had two institutions which had a big impact on my life with music, the cathedral, and the army band. My dad sang in the church choir (plus he was a self-taught accordionist and guitarist, quite good on both.) My mother and I went regularly to church services to hear the choir. Especially important to me were the monthly” evening songs” on Sunday nights when a special music program with the choir had been prepared. The big organ was featured which made a great impression on me.
 
When the choir conductor Rudolf Norrman had hired a group of string players to participate, I was especially mesmerized and spellbound of the violin sound and looks of the string instruments. I was six at the time and little did I know that four years later I would start taking violin lessons from one of these musicians through the public school. These musicians came from the professional army band. Their main instruments were woodwind and brass, but some also were quite good string players too. And they also taught music to the school kids in town. So, it meant a lot to me having these cultural centers in the same little town of 7,000 inhabitants.
 
A third institution important for my early musical life was the high school, which happened to have an excellent music teacher.  She inspired me to go to string camps in the summers to hear other advanced students and meet with professors who could lead and guide me towards developing my musicianship and maybe even pursue a professional education in music. That way I met with professors Sven Karpe and Otto Kyndel, both leading pedagogues at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, and teachers
  at violin camps around the country.
 
Thanks to these camp programs I became ready to seek higher education in music. I applied to and auditioned for The Royal Music Academy in Stockholm, Kungliga Musikaliska Akademin, or ”Ackis” as we called it.  I was accepted in 1967, the same year I graduated from high school.
 
 
When did you meet your wife and where and and when did you get married? 
 
Christina lived in Skåne, the southern part of Sweden, and I was born and raised 600 kilometers north of her! So how did we meet and get together? At the conservatory I became very close friends with a church music student from Skåne. He conducted a youth choir back home and came up with the idea of asking if I and some other friends would like to travel the next summer to where he lived. He thought we could put together a music program with singers and instruments during a week or two and perform in some of the nearby countryside churches. I thought this was a great idea.
 
One of the singers in his choir was Christina, my future wife. This was in 1970. We met at this summer camp, love was in the air, and all worked out right. To make a long story short, three years later in 1973 we got married in Strängnäs Cathedral. We moved to Vallentuna where Christina worked her first job as a schoolteacher and I had 1/2-hour drive from there to my job in the Danderyd’s Kommunala Musikskola, the public music school in Danderyd, my first employment after graduating my degree in violin pedagogy. Our three kids were born, Johanna in 1976, Helena in 1979, and Andreas in 1981. 
 
When did you move to the US and how did you start your Sycamore Strings / Academy in Livermore?
 
I moved with my family of five to Illinois for one year in 1988. I wanted to study the Suzuki educational method for Professor John Kendall who had made a life changing impression on me with the way he used and interpreted this teaching technique in music instruction. He visited Sweden numerous times in the eighties and said yes when I asked if I could study for him. I brought my whole family so everyone could experience life abroad with a new language and culture. One year felt too short so we stayed for two years. During that year I graduated with a master’s degree and got a job offer in California which I accepted.
 
That job was in Livermore where parents had started a music program based on the Suzuki approach already in the early eighties. They were seeking a new senior teacher after the previous teacher had announced he was moving.
 
With no long-term plan, just one year at a time, we stayed on and gradually felt at home in the country and after a range of work permits and visa, we became American citizens in 2003. I have now lived in Livermore since 1990.
 
How did you discover the Church of Sweden in SF and what has it meant to you and your family? Tell is about your tour to Sweden.
 
Being Swedish church goers for our whole life we wanted to continue that. When we found out about the Church of Sweden in San Francisco we became members and started visiting the services. After a while we offered to play music at services. I put together a string quartet with my children, the “Berg Quartet”, which performed now and then, sometimes also with Christina on the guitar.
 
How is your health and how have you coped with life after you lost your wife and during the pandemic? Where are your children today and what are they working with?
 
Life’s fragility has slowly made its way into my life and put down its mark. Christina passed away in 2017 on Christmas Day. Thanks to Church of Sweden, pastor Louise Linder, organist Ragnar Bohlin, and Peace Lutheran Church in Danville with pastor Steve Harms, we had the best help to celebrate and memorialize Christina’s life. Without her, I wouldn’t have been able to live our American adventure with our family.
 
My children both live close to me, and far away! Johanna lives in Auburn, CA with her family, husband Justin, and Amity, 20, and Julia 15. Helena lives with me with her two children, Lily, 9, and Leo, 5. Johanna works with physical therapy and Helena is a public health nurse.
 
Andreas lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Within his job at Folke Bernadotte Academy, his work area is Europe. He has been sent out to work at different missions in countries where the government needs help to build and develop governmental abilities, like judicial systems, and police organization. During the last ten years he has lived and worked in Kosovo, Georgia, and most recently Ukraine. He has two cats, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine.
 
Parkinson’s disease has decreased my ability to play the violin which is not something I take lightly. I can still teach and conduct the orchestra, which are wonderful ways to make music with young people.
 
Tell us about the program you will be presenting in our Church in the March 10 service.
 
We will play music during the service and at the reception. 
J.H. Roman, Drottningholmsmusiken, and one of the hit songs of the pop group ABBA, Money, Money, Money. And short movements by Shostakovich, Walton, Mozart, and Telemann.