Marion music academy inspiring local students

As you turn into the driveway, the soft notes of a piano can be heard, but if you walk inside much more can be found.

“I just like music, I’ve been singing since I was five-years-old and I’m in the band at school,” Fourteen year-old Adaya Sturkey said.

Sturkey is a student at Crescendo Music Academy where she studies piano. She has been playing the piano for about four years.

“I grew up around music because my mom and sister both play the piano and my sister was also in the school band,” Sturkey said.

Cleve Dorsey and Debra Dorsey Fling are co-owners of Crescendo Music Academy in Marion. Cleve Dorsey was teaching music in Florence and had students driving 30-40 minutes from Marion County to take lessons from him. Dorsey did a survey of the area and found that there were not many music teachers certified to take students to national music competitions.

Dorsey attended Music Education classes at Charleston Southern University. He has taught at public and private schools, performed for Paramount Company, choreographed numerous productions and has taught private music lessons for more than nine years.

“We put all of our students into reputable series that have been tried and true for years. I know that I make sure that myself and the other instructors that I bring on are held to high standards of teaching,” Dorsey said.

“I’m more aware of what is going on musically. If they give us music (in church choir) that has notes on it I can almost know what it is going to sound like before I even hear it,” Sturkey said.

Samantha Querubin has been playing the piano since she was about eight years old. She is now 11 years old and is another student of Dorsey’s.

“I like playing fast songs. One of my favorite songs to play is “Ode to Joy” but right now I am working on a Christmas song called “Up on the House Top” and it’s a bit hard and challenging,” Querubin said.

Dorsey enjoys watching his students grow musically.

“I don’t want them to just play music, anyone can play things on the piano or sing the words to a song, but it takes a musician to create music, to create emotion within a song, to make you feel,” Dorsey said.

Dorsey says he does everything he can to get his student to a place where they can further their musical education, whether that is on a collegiate or professional level.

Sturkey would like to try to go to college on a music scholarship and continue to be involved with church choirs.

“Even if I don’t end up doing anything professionally with music, if I learn now it will be something that I will have with me for the rest of my life so I can always come back to it because it is something that is hard to forget,” Sturkey said.

Once students start to accomplish their musical goal it helps them build their self-confidence and that carries over to different aspects of their lives, according to Dorsey.

“When they think they can’t do something then all of a sudden they’re like ‘I got it! I got it!’ just to see them accomplish a goal they didn’t think they could accomplish, that is the greatest thing about teaching,” Dorsey said.

Querubin would like to be a soccer player when she grows up but she still wants to play the piano on the side.
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