Featured April 2023
Performing music teaches this life lesson: the best seats are on stage
“Unlike the talented and lovely musicians of our orchestra, I didn’t have a life of lessons or pursue a music degree. I just never set down my instrument.” Christian’s musical journey began in fifth grade. “Faced with the choice of band or choir, I wanted to play an instrument. However, after the two years of piano lessons that little kids get, I was convinced I had slow fingers. That ruled out all instruments except the shoulder-mounted slide whistle.”
“To continue playing after high school, I either needed to build the high range of the tenor trombone or specialize on a more obscure instrument. I couldn’t get the high notes at the time, so my parents gave me a bass trombone for graduation.”
Featured April 2023
Stacey hasn’t missed a concert since joining the VSA in January 2010. She started on bass clarinet, and in 2015, after long-time principal clarinetist Larry Sims retired, she switched to B-flat clarinet.
Born and raised in Tracy, CA, an ag town that was about the size of Delta, she and her dad connected through music and dance. “He has a wonderful baritone voice, played euphonium in school, and taught me to swing dance by having me stand on his shoes when I was little.” She relocated to Montrose in July, 2007, with then fiancé Seth Ryan, who sings in the VSA Chorus as his schedule allows. They were married at the Beaumont Hotel in Ouray the following June. Both her dad and Seth sang to and danced with her at the wedding.
When Stacey was in the 3rd grade, her mom bought the clarinet that Stacey still plays for a whopping $50. “What a screaming deal! It turned out to be a top-of-the-line instrument!" In summer school that year, Joe E. Foster, who became her high school band director, taught her to play. In high school she studied under Dr. William C. Dominik, clarinet professor at the Conservatory of Music at University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA). A four-year member of the county honor band, she was also selected as a member of the prestigious symphonic level bands of all California All-State Honor Bands available (there are multiple) all four years (a rare accomplishment), and entered UCLA on a music scholarship in 1983.
Featured February 2023
I just want to play, so in the end, having a place to play and others to play with is what matters.
Growing up, there was always someone in Edie’s house playing an instrument. When she was just learning to read, she remembers standing in church by her mom, who was the church organist and also sang alto, and asking her how she knew what the next note would be. She showed Edie how the notes moved up and down on the little lines and how you followed along. “That’s when I started learning music.”
She’s lived in Cedaredge since she was 8. She has been playing flute since the 5th grade and started piano lessons that same year. In junior high school, she took lessons locally and then from Allen Porter in Grand Junction before heading to college in Nebraska. She came back to the area, got married, and started a family.
Featured December, 2022
A former research scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, CA, Vince Farnsworth worked in the biological sciences inventing and developing analytical instrumentation, and he holds “20 or so” patents. He was active as a hobbyist with the highly respected Ventura County Astronomical Society, where he learned to photograph deep space images. It is his love of photography—especially the types of otherworldly, deep space imagery revealed through the use of telescopes—that has turned into a second career.
Since retiring to Montrose in 2006 with wife Maggie, Vince has become a well-known, respected, and sought-after landscape photographer and astrophotographer of Western night skies. Many consider him to be the premier photographer of the internationally renowned dark skies of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. He’s the author of Getting Up Early: The Visitor’s Guide to Photographing the Black Canyon. He even discovered a natural phenomenon visible during early mornings in spring and summer at the Black Canyon in April 2012. He and park rangers named his find Dragon’s Tongue.
Featured December, 2022
Lois grew up in Fort Morgan, CO. In the fourth grade, she started playing the piano and violin. “My Dad said that, if I got good enough, we could move the piano from my bedroom into the living room.”
She did get good enough and the piano was relocated. She played at church and was her mother’s accompanist when she sang. In school Lois played the violin in the orchestra and in a traveling string quartet. Her family moved to Montrose when she was 13. “Much to my disappointment there was only a band in high school—no orchestra.” She took up the oboe so she could have some music in her life. “Don’t ask me to play it now, as I would not know where to start!”
Lois has lived in the area for 55 years, the last 18 in Delta. She’s worked for the Montrose School District for 28 years. She loves to read and fly fish, and lives a content, peaceful, and mostly drama-free life.