After posting yesterday about the “found percussion” I’m using in my new middle school piece, I came across this article in today’s Chicago Sun Times.  The article is about Vadim Karpinos, who plays timpani and assorted percussion in the Chicago Symphony.  The story speaks specifically to this idea that just about anything can be percussion:

For one Symphony Center concert, Karpinos bought some “instruments” at the Home Depot and local thrift stores. His job during a performance of chamber music by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti was to smash stuff on stage — glasses, dishes and a wooden box. “I enjoyed that quite a bit. It’s great stress relief.”
That performance was a return to his musical roots. “I just loved banging on things — pots and pans and old LP records,” he said. “My parents saw that my interest wasn’t going away, so my father made me a drum set out of an ironing board and some old tin cans.”

Don’t worry. I won’t be asking students to smash glasses. A trip to Home Depot is probably not out of the question, though…