On a Different Note…

by Liv Stecker

Some people believe a good voice is something that you have to be born with, but Stazya Richman disagrees, and she’s got the background to prove it. Like any skill or talent, a singing voice is an instrument that is learned and developed over time through hard work, training and dedication. A local treasure trove of talent, Stazya has committed her decades of investment to the community in Northern Stevens County.

Born in the Maryland, Stazya began studying music as a young child with the violin. When she was 11 years old she began to take voice lessons from the coach of her older sister, and launched what would become a lifelong passion. After high school, Stazya attended the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, followed by the University of Maryland and the State University of New York at Purchase, which was a newly formed arts college staffed by artists and performers from New York City. Stazya’s studies focused on early music, including medieval, renaissance and baroque styles. She also attended the Ali Akbar Khar College of Music in San Rafael California, where she studied classical Indian Music.

After relocating to California, Stazya spent several years in the 1980s traveling the world, freelancing as a vocalist, giving workshops and recitals all over the globe, spending large amounts of time in Europe. Stazya says that her voice as a young woman was a “sweet” sounding voice, but as her studies expanded in  classical Indian music and more styles, she began to tap into a broader, deeper range that surprised even her. Among many other misconceptions that Stazya says are widely held about singing voices, one is the little known fact that “the female voice doesn’t mature until the age of 24, and in men, 25-26.”

Stazya left California in 1991 when she was pregnant with her oldest son. She moved to Stevens County where she spent the next few years raising her two boys in the Onion Creek area north of Colville. During this time she recorded the album Songs From Within, which is a collection of world devotional songs in different languages and styles that hearken to her broad musical education.

In 2000, Stazya began to work some local high school students in her neighborhood, tapping into her years of professional training and performing to develop young voices in the community. She helped occasionally at Onion Creek School, where her children attended until high school. She offered voice lessons two days a week at the House of Music in Colville where she collected a couple dozen students of varying backgrounds and musical ambitions. While much of her education was in early classical music, Stazya was able to teach and coach voices for styles across the spectrum, including jazz, world music, blues, and much more. “No matter what style, the technique is the same.” she says, “I use a good, clean, classical technique which can be plugged into whatever style you sing.” Even pop music performed with a microphone requires the same projection techniques that stage and theater singers without audio technology employ.

Stazya maintains that the most commonly held misconception about singing is that people are born with or without a “good” singing voice. “Tone deaf does not exist.” she says, “you can relate it to any learned skill, like drawing. The more you work on it, the more you understand it.” In fact, Stazya insists that some of the best singers are the ones who have worked harder and longer on developing their skill than those who are born with intrinsic musical talent and don’t put the time in. “Those who work can achieve their goal, and then go beyond it.” She reiterates, citing success stories she has experienced over the years with students who grew up believing they were tone deaf.

Over the last 15 years, Stazya has worked with students of all ages and ability levels. Many of her students have gone on to study music after high school in college jazz performance programs. Stazya has mentored singers from local schools, and many homeschooled students as well. She has helped out with high school music programs and theater and drama endeavors as well.

Stay plays "Martha" in the Woodland's Theater production of Secret Garden

Stazya performed as a soloist with the Woodlands Theater choir in their production of Fauré’s Requiem, launching a long term relationship with the community theater. She met Thomas Hart in her involvement at Woodlands and played a lead role in the musical he composed called Tastes Like Chicken in 2009. She and Hart formed the band Stazya and the Naturals along with Adam Huff and other local musicians. The band  has become a local favorite, performing musical favorites of all genres for live audiences. Stazya and the Naturals recorded an album called Look to the Sky which features a mix of some of their widely varied style.

Since 2007 Stazya has worked as the vocal director for musical productions, as well as performing roles in several productions, including Annie, Drowsy Chaperone, South Pacific, Little Shop of Horrors, Secret Garden, Suessical, and she is on board again for the upcoming Addams Family in 2016.

Prior to her involvement at Woodland Theater, Stazya performed at Spokane’s Bach Festival under the direction of Gunther Schuller for seven years. The schedule for the festival came into conflict with her projects at the Woodland Theater and Stazya decided to invest her talents closer to home.

She now offers vocal lessons and coaching out of her home in Colville as well as once a week in Chewelah at the newly established Aaron Huff Memorial Cultural Center. She mentors student recipients of  vocal scholarships from both Colville High School and Junior High, and works with the local school choirs when time allows.

Stazya offers gift certificates for lessons, which make an excellent holiday gift for the budding talent in your family, or anyone with a little bit of curiosity and motivation. “I help children and adults with ‘pitch issues’, and other problems,” she offers, “I take my mentoring role very seriously.” Stazya sees the development of voice as important as many other facets of human growth and personality development. Unlike other instruments, it is impossible to separate the singer from the tool they are using to perform. In the same manner, it is impossible for an individual to hide behind their instrument when it is a part of who they are as a person.

To contact Stazya about vocal lessons, booking a show with Stazya and the Naturals, or other information, you can call 509-684-7761. You can also find Facebook pages for both Stazya and the Naturals and Stazya’s Vocal Studio.

From Battlefield to Builder

How the town of Gifford was born

by Liv Stecker

James Oscar Gifford was born in Linden Michigan in 1843. Before his 20th birthday he was drafted into the Union Army to fight in the civil war. On November 29th, during the Battle of Mine Run in Orange County, Virginia, Gifford took a musket ball to the left thigh that shattered his femur. His leg was amputated above the knee in a field hospital in the fog and rain of late November and Gifford was discharged from the army after his recuperation the following spring.  

After the death of his first wife, James O. Gifford married Sarah Elizabeth Williams, and soon following the birth of their fifth child, only three of which were living, they loaded the family up into a covered wagon and moved west. In 1884, James and Sarah settled near Moscow, Idaho, where they remained until 1888. As they moved west, James drove a herd of horses along with them to sell in in the burgeoning communities where they were headed.

After a short time in Pullman and Hartline, Washington, the family once again moved in their wagons up the Columbia River to settle up north on the east side of the river along with two of James’ brothers. They built a homestead and began to farm the land, and in 1896, the first Gifford post office was established. James’ wife Sarah was the first postmistress in the mail room that they operated out of the mercantile store that James built.

During their time in Idaho and the Palouse, James and Sarah had had two more children. Their five children farmed with them, and as more families arrived in the picturesque setting along the river, fruit orchards were established. In 1891, the first school began a few miles outside of the town of Gifford, but it wasn’t until 1921 that a school was built in town. In 1898 the Gifford ferry was established for shuttling passengers across the Columbia river to Inchelium on the Colville Indian Reservation.

The family run mercantile was a social hub as the community grew up around it. James and Sarah gave away commemorative china plates to customers with dates and ornate images in the early 1900s. The first mail route in the area came in from Harvey, which was known as the Chalk Grade between Rice and Kettle Falls. Eventually, routes between Addy and Inchelium, as well as Davenport and Kettle Falls were established. The ferry service kept a steady stream of traffic through the little community, including miners and fruit growers.

Before James retired in 1916 from running his mercantile, he saw Gifford blossom into a bustling community with a hardware store, church, blacksmith shop, an IOOF (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) Hall, a pool hall, hotel, service station, and the ferry service. Three of his five children had married and settled in the area or nearby. His oldest son Elmer and wife Lula took over the mercantile when James retired, Lula replacing Sarah as the postmistress. Sarah passed away in 1918.

Ira and Lizzie, two of James and Sarah’s children, lived in Gifford with their parents but never married. The oldest of the Gifford’s daughters, Lutie, married a man named Francis Ward who was drowned accidentally when he came off his horse during a cattle drive across the winter. In 1929, the youngest of James and Sarah’s sons, David, was murdered by an unstable neighbor who was poisoning the creek with arsenic.  Elmer and Lula never had children, but David had two children, and daughter Lutie had four daughters with Francis Ward before his death.

David’s son Roland married Mary Anderson Gifford who became postmistress after Lula Gifford and retired from the Gifford post office in 1986. Several generations of James and Sarah’s grandchildren still live in around Washington state, many still near the Gifford area in Northeastern Washington.

James sold the property where he had constructed the IOOF Hall for $15.00 in 1925, one year before his death in 1926 at the age of 83. The civil war veteran was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and attending regional gatherings, as well as his involvement in the IOOF.

In 1939, as work began on the Grand Coulee Dam, the town of Gifford was relocated to higher ground. At this time the remaining establishments that were moved included the store, post office and service station. The IOOF hall was moved and consolidated with the Rebekah Lodge and the Rice Lodge after the move, and it stands near the Gifford store still today. The Gifford Cemetery was also moved to Kettle Falls before the dam was completed.

For a man who lost a leg on a bloody Civil War battlefield before he was 21, James O. Gifford was a mover and shaker of his time, leaving behind a legacy of perseverance and tenacity. After suffering the loss of his leg, his first wife and two infants with his wife Sarah in Michigan, Gifford was a man on a mission. Leaving his excuses behind him, he took on  a cross country trek, driving horses and leading a covered wagon with a wife and three young children, including a new baby, to start a new life in the west. He planted the seeds for generations of pioneers in Stevens County, hard working families who have built our communities into what they are today.