My main project last year was Clunker Concerto, a percussion quartet concerto for junk car and orchestra, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra. In the piece, a mock car is broken down into its constituent parts, revealing a diverse arsenal of unusual and surprisingly robust “junk” instruments. Rather than use the junk primarily as percussive objects—that is, as things that make loud sounds when you hit them—I treated them as I treated the orchestral instruments: as complex instruments with their own unique timbres and idiosyncratic performance techniques. (For example, I developed bowing and fingering techniques that turned fenders and hubcaps into fully chromatic instruments.) By focusing on these nuances of the junk, I found many ways to organically blend them with the orchestra, expanding the latter’s sound palette in rich, otherworldly, and wacky ways. In Rome, I will substantially expand and revise the piece in preparation for its studio recording in 2012 and perhaps, make a small chamber version of it with Roman junk. I will also complete several commissions for shorter chamber and solo works.