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One young budding classical artist will be delving full force into her music for the last couple years of high school.

Rising junior Madeleine McEntire will attend the Governor’s School for Arts and Humanities in Greenville with a focus on music, specifically the piano. She previously attended Newberry Academy for pre-kindergarten through 10th grade.

McEntire is excited about this venture into the public, residential high school where she can learn more about music, particularly classical.

She professes to enjoying the music of classical musician Chopin who is her favorite composer because of his romanticism and ability to keep things simple.

Romantic classical music is McEntire’s favorite by far, she says matter of fact.

McEntire has only been playing the piano for about five years and her younger sister, Mariclare McEntire, started before her.

In fact, it was Mariclare who brought Madeleine into the love of the piano. Now Madeleine says she enjoys it immensely and figures that her two years at the Governor’s School will help her decide if she wants to pursue studying music in college or medicine.

There’s a story behind Madeleine learning to play. As she explains, her sister was playing and would charge her a dime per lesson. Eventually, she decided to pursue professional lessons.

She began taking lessons from Amy Wise, a private teacher and then went on to study with Dr. Laurel Larsen, a music professor at Newberry College.

Actually, it wasn’t too long ago that Madeleine thought that she would study medicine at college but time at the Academy camp at the Governor’s School this past summer changed her mind and really pushed her to wanting to study music more.

The summer camp at the school really pushed her more to this passion.

“It was a wake-up call to classical music,” says Madeleine, who describes the camp as all music, all the time along with some intense theory and scholastic education.

Madeleine will actually start school Aug. 13 but will move in this weekend.

She’s looking forward to it because not only will she gain abundant knowledge about music theory and piano, among regular academics, she will get a feel for what college is like since she’ll be living in dormitories.

In addition to getting a head start on the college like experience, she also has a group of friends that she befriended at camp. She and her friends from camp are all rising juniors.

As for school, she will have academics from 8:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. and then music from 1:30-4 p.m.

She says she will be able to come home on weekends to see her parents, Allen and Janet McEntire, and during the summer, like college. She’ll also have scheduled performances and have opportunities at ensembles and such.

Madeleine’s venture into an arts school is one she is really looking forward to.

“The school is beautiful, the teachers and training are top-notch, and I am very excited,” says Madeleine about the Governor’s School.

As for future plans aside from college, she would like to learn to play the harp. For now, she’s focused on mastering the piano.

The S.C. Governor’s School of the Arts and Humanities is a residential high school for emerging artists in Greenville. The school gives artistically talented high school students from across the state the opportunity to study their art in a supportive environment of artistic and academic excellence. Arts concentrations include creative writing, dance, drama, music and visual arts.

According to Newsweek Magazine’s 2012 list of America’s Best High Schools, the S.C. Governor’s School of the Arts is ranked #42 in the nation.