Jay (Scott) Hackleman (Music BFA 85) checks in: “Thanks to Ravi Shankar’s sponsorship, I lived in India for about a year on a grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies to apprentice with a master musical instrument maker. Since then, I’ve been busy repairing and building Indian classical instruments as well as commissions for bespoke musical instruments (www.hacklemanshop.com). Of the bespoke instruments I’ve made, the most fun and challenging have been building the replicas of Harry Partch’s stringed instruments for the LA group PARTCH (www.partch.la). The most recent was the completion of a replica of ‘Kithara II’ (c. 1954) in time for PARTCH’s performance of The Wayward on Nov. 9, 2019.”