LOCAL

Shady Grove youngster’s innovative musical instrument featured in magazine

PAT FRIDGEN, Echo Pilot

Editors of Highlights chose Jordan Noll’s entry for publication. The magazine receives 35,000 submissions annually on various topics, and showcases a representative sampling in an effort to foster children’s creativity.

Jordan Noll plays flute and piano, and wants to add violin, but she invented a saxa-trump-atone for a magazine contest last May.

The Shady Grove girl responded to a Highlights for Children invitation, combining a saxaphone, trumpet and baritone into one instrument, carried on a backpack, available for play with a turn of the unit. She submitted a short explanation and drawing of the original musical piece.

It turned out to be a winning entry. One letter from the publisher thanked her for the entry, another that it would be featured in the December 2012 issue.

“I was real excited,” said Jordan, 11.

Ironically, Jordan had chosen a six-month subscription to the magazine, after earning points at an educational website, Book Adventure. The subscription expired, but she received two free copies of the magazine containing her winning entry.

Homeschooled student Jordan plays in the Greencastle-Antrim Middle School sixth grade band under Alyson Balascik, and takes private lessons from Amanda Bietsch. She also likes to sing, and is a member of the Cumberland Valley School of Music Cumberbunds. She knows why she has musical talent.

“I think it’s hereditary.”

The daughter of Carla and Jeff Noll, her dad is music pastor at Hagerstown Bible Church, and her grandfather John Noll is a church choir director. She also has three siblings, Joshua, 14, Careth, 9, and Caleb, 4.