Wouldn’t it be nice to be in the presence of angels singing? That’s the sensation that Jake Schlaerth, a Mason Gross School of the Arts graduate student, gets when he plays the glass armonica, the rare 18th-century instrument that consists of 42 tuned quartz bowls mounted on a rotating spindle and played with the friction of wet fingers. His playing features prominently in the score for the superhero movie Logan. Robert and Charlotte GSNB’64 Craig fund the school’s glass armonica fellowship, making it the only one of its kind at a university in the nation—and making Schlaerth one of two dozen players  nationally. A favorite invention of Benjamin Franklin’s, the armonica “has a supernatural quality to it, a really ethereal sound,” Schlaerth says. “I like  it a lot.”

VIEW A VIDEO TO HEAR THE SOUND OF SCHLAERTH PLAYING A GLASS ARMONICA.