Auburn musician Kevin Dorsey knows all too well the impact Hospice of the Finger Lakes can have on the lives of the people the facility cares for, as well as the lives of the families touched by hospice.

Dorsey said that his father, Jim was a long time volunteer for hospice and his step-mother, Valerie, also worked as a nurse for hospice.

“Through my dad and my step-mom I knew a little bit about what they did,” Dorsey said. “And I get to see it in action. My dad wasn#'t on hospice care officially, but I got to see what it does and I think that it is a great thing they do to help people and families in a difficult time.”

Dorsey#'s father passed away in 2007, but even before Dorsey knew of his father#'s illness, he was planning on getting involved in lending a hand to hospice.

“In April we were talking about setting up a meeting,” Dorsey said. “I wanted to do something as a fundraiser for them.”

Dorsey, who is an accomplished musician, well known as a bass player and trumpet player, Dorsey who holds a masters of music in studio jazz writing from the University of Miami and is a music instructor at the Seymour Dual Language Academy in Syracuse, found a means to cope with the loss of his father through his music.

“My step-mom gave me a guitar we had bought for him a couple of years ago,” Dorsey said. “I brought it to school with me and I would play it every day and I slowly began writing these songs a little bit at a time and all these fragments started developing in the course of a little over a year.”

Dorsey, who is also an accomplished composer with more than 100 pieces to his credit ranging from duos to symphony orchestra pieces, said that writing on his father's guitar was a new and cathartic experience.

“I'm a bass player,” Dorsey said. “And normally I work the music I write out on the piano, so this was different and the songs came out different. I was thinking about my dad a lot. I think it helped with the grieving process, but I think it also helped me to realize that this wasn#'t the final word on those feelings and it wasn',t the final word on him either, but that this was a statement about him and about those feelings in these songs.”

Dorsey said that while much of his own work has focused on jazz based music and composition; he found that while writing music with his father#'s guitar, using a different instrument and with all the thoughts and feelings that were in his head and heart, he found the music coming out in new ways.

“It is something different than I would normally write,” Dorsey said. “There is a Celtic, folk kind of quality to these songs. My dad was a big fan of American folk music, like the Kingston Trio and some of these songs came out with the kind of feel. I think that it is a fitting tribute to my father, it is the kind of music he liked.”

Once the songs were composed, Dorsey began the recoding process at his home studio recording the basic demos and many of the basic tracks himself before sending the demos on some of his friends in the local music community.

The CD, “Fore! A Hospice of the Finger Lakes Benefit,” a titled again inspired by his father#'s love of golf, features many talents artists adding their talents to the 10 tracks that comprise the CD.

Dorsey enlisted the help of people such as percussionist GD Bower, as well as guitarist Loren Barrigar and fiddler Amy Christian.

Dorsey said that while he recorded much of the music himself, the other musicians added their valuable expertise giving the recordings a special kind of quality.

While the CD was officially released on Doresy#'s Web site and at several area stores, he said that in the spring he hopes to have a major release party to help get the word out about the CD, 75 percent of the proceeds of which go to Hospice of the Finger Lakes.

“So far without a real press release or anything sales have been pretty good,” Dorsey said. “We just wanted to try to get it out in time for the holiday season. But in late march or April we are planning on having a big celebration and performance to have a real official release.”