School Notes

Jazz fans looking for a swinging way to spend an evening can see the Lars Halle Jazz Orchestra play at

Coatesville Area Senior High School

's auditorium on Thursday night in a show that will benefit the Coatesville Parents Music Club.

The orchestra, named after its drummer and bandleader, will give a performance entitled "A Tribute to Maynard Ferguson," which will include samplings of work by the Canadian jazz trumpet star who died in 2006 at 78.

Stocked with former Coatesville students and a current Coatesville teacher, the orchestra will play for about two hours to raise money for the music club, which funds uniforms, instruments and other necessities for Coatesville's bands.

"A Tribute to Maynard Ferguson" starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $8 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens, and will be available at the door. For more information on the Lars Halle Jazz Orchestra, visit lhjo.com. The senior high school is at 1445 E. Lincoln Highway, Coatesville.

An Iraq War veteran, a civil-rights activist, and an Inquirer columnist visited

Tredyffrin-Easttown Middle School

along with 33 other "heroes" on Tuesday, capping a year-long program called "Lives Well Lived."

Gloria Breedlove, a civil-rights activist from Philadelphia, Justin Rishel, a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and Purple Heart winner from New York, and Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney visited the middle school and spoke to students. The theme for the program was "Heroes: You create yourself by the choices you make."

"We got a list of people together who could talk about the choices they've made in their lives to inspire our students, people we thought were heroes," said Susan Margolis, parent of a fifth-grader at TEMS and a member of the Lives Well Lived committee which organized the event.

Derrick Ford, founder of the Strawberry Mansion All-Stars baseball league and Molly and Carly Houlahan, two Agnes Irwin students from Devon who started Hives for Lives, a company that sells honey, honeycomb, beeswax and other related products to benefit cancer research, also spoke to TEMS students.

- Will Hobson