Canto Ostinato
Metropolis Ensemble collaborated with Erik Hall and Sandbox Percussion to breathe new life into Simeon ten Holt’s minimalist masterpiece, Canto Ostinato.
Canto Ostinato LP out April 3rd via Western Vinyl
Composed by Simeon ten Holt, 1976–1979
© 1979 Donemus Music Publishing
Arranged by Erik Hall, David Leon, Jonny Allen, and Ben Wallace
Commissioned and developed by Metropolis Ensemble (2024-2025)
Produced by Andrew Cyr and Erik Hall
Engineered by Mike Tierney at Pinch Recording, Fieldnotes Studio, and The Centennial Memorial Temple of the Salvation Army, New York, NY,
2025 Mixed by Erik Hall and Mike Tierney Mastered by Warren Defever
Artwork and layout by Aaron Lowell Denton
Special thanks to: Metropolis Ensemble Board of Directors, Sandbox Percussion Board of Directors, Katie Pidgeon, Nadine Cabrera, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The New School, Burt Mason, Henry Wang, Brian Sampson / Western Vinyl, Geo Corona / Terrorbird, Michael & Helen Henson / Blu Ocean Arts, Patricia Price & Matt Herman / 8va Music Consultancy
Metropolis Ensemble, Erik Hall, Sandbox Percussion - Canto Ostinato Sections 74-87 (Simeon ten Holt)
About the Album
Sometime in 2020 I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time, and my enthrallment with the piece had begun. I was transfixed by its particular amalgam of harmony, repetition, and pacing. By the spring of 2023 I had constructed and released my own solo interpretation, and I assumed at that point my working relationship with the composition had run its course. But I underestimated its magnetism. The following year I was back in its grips, having been invited by Metropolis Ensemble’s Andrew Cyr to expand on the foundation I had laid with the piece. Soon I was in Brooklyn, on a team of six with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, humbled and thrilled to be helping architect a brand new large ensemble arrangement of Canto Ostinato for a summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did so, our cohort growing to include the students of The New School Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as musicians David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. It was a day we will all remember—sweeping, dreamlike, and what felt like a quintessential culmination. But even then… the piece still beckoned, and it became clear this new orchestration called for the embarkment on a studio album. A permanent document of our now collective ardor. Refined over a year and recorded in New York, 2025, this performance recasts the piece anew in a towering framework of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our truest attempt at conveying Canto’s beauty and magnitude in all its kaleidoscopic harmony, dynamism, tension, and release. I stand once again in awe of Simeon ten Holt’s monumental creation; to be a thread in its sonic fabric is one of the great honors of my musical life. I don’t assume we might be so fortunate again… but who knows.
-EH
Metropolis Ensemble
Sandbox Percussion
About The Artists
Erik Hall
Erik Hall is a musician and composer in Michigan. He is best known for his multi-instrumental solo recordings and live performances of contemporary classical works, which have been featured by The Wire, Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, WNYC New Sounds, and The New York Times. His 2020 re-creation of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians won the Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and his 2023 interpretation of Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato followed with a nomination in the same category. Erik has composed or arranged music for Chicago’s GRAMMY-winning Third Coast Percussion, NYC’s GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion, and for feature films The Night Clerk and The Mountain. He has recorded and toured with NOMO, Wild Belle, His Name Is Alive, In Tall Buildings, and Lean Year, appearing at Lollapalooza, Coachella, Pitchfork Music Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, CONAN, and The Tonight Show
Sandbox Percussion
The GRAMMY®-nominated Sandbox Percussion champions living composers through its dedication to contemporary chamber music. In 2011, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, and Terry Sweeney came together through a mutual interest in expanding the repertoire. They have toured the world since—from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris to the Beijing Music Festival—appeared on NPR’s popular Tiny Desk series, and collaborated with composer Kris Bowers on their first feature film, The Wild Robot (DreamWorks). Building on the success of Seven Pillars—a large-scale percussion suite composed by Andy Akiho that was nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards and a Pulitzer Prize—the group is creating a new work with Akiho joining on steelpan. Sandbox Percussion’s Don’t Look Down (PENTATONE), featuring music by Christopher Cerrone, won the 2026 GRAMMY® Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical (engineers Mike Tierney and Alan Silverman). It is the first percussion group to receive the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Metropolis Ensemble
GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble, founded by conductor Andrew Cyr in 2006, has commissioned more than 450 new works over two decades — including a JUNO Award winner for Best Classical Composition. The ensemble moves fluidly between worlds: Lincoln Center and the Hollywood Bowl, Brooklyn Steel and Music Hall of Williamsburg, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Victory Theatre, COSM's immersive domes in Los Angeles and Dallas, Celebrate Brooklyn, Sounds from a Safe Harbour, and Eaux Claires Hiver. The ensemble's Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia — a collaboration with Cambodian artists addressing the Khmer Rouge genocide — premiered at BAM's Next Wave and toured internationally to Paris, Melbourne, Montreal, Boston, Taiwan, and Phnom Penh. Recent recognition includes Timo Andres' The Blind Banister, recorded by Metropolis Ensemble, which received a 2025 GRAMMY nomination for Best Engineered Album, Classical — as well as a New York Times Best of 2025 citation for the opera In a Grove at the PROTOTYPE Festival.
The ensemble's recordings span Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, Merge, Naxos, and Def Jam. Metropolis's ongoing collaboration with Brooklyn Botanic Garden includes their annual Biophony Solstice concerts, where the ensemble first performed Canto Ostinato with Erik Hall and Sandbox Percussion for over 3,000 audience members at sunrise and sunset.
Western Vinyl
Western Vinyl is an independent record label founded in 1998 in Austin, Texas. Over two decades, it has grown into one of the most consistently impressive ambient and experimental labels in the world — a home for artists like Balmorhea, Dirty Projectors, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Erik Hall, My Brightest Diamond, and Elori Saxl.
