Erik Hall: Music for 18 Musicians & Canto Ostinato (Performance + Spatial Audio Installation)
An evening of celebrated interpretations by multi-instrumentalist and composer Erik Hall, presented as a solo performance + spatial audio installation.
This event is co-presented by National Sawdust.
LIVE AT NATIONAL SAWDUST
September 26, 2026
Concert at 7:30PM // Doors at 6:30PM
In conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the piece's NYC premiere—as well as Reich's 90th birthday—Hall returns to the iconic work for his National Sawdust debut, leveraging the room's immersive Meyer Sound audio system to present his one-man multi-tracked rendition in a transportive new light. Hear the prepared pianos, Hammond organ, electric guitars, and analog synths of Hall's Michigan home studio in kaleidoscopic surround sound, while he executes a grouping of the instruments live on stage—a distilled, in-person exhibition of the recording's soundscape.
Erik Hall's 2020 re-imagining of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is as adventurous as it is reverent, supplanting the original instrumentation for Hall's own keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers. It won the Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and Pitchfork described it as "shrewd, prismatic, organic... a minimalist standard freshly thrilling to revisit."
About the Program
Hall opens the program with an equally beloved monument of Dutch minimalism, Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato. Over four years, two studio albums, and concert performances of myriad iterations, Hall's journey with the piece has been well documented and praised by Bandcamp Daily, The Wire, and The New York Times. Unique to this occasion, Hall activates the house sound system to draw on his 2026 chamber orchestra recording alongside NYC’s GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion, with subtly-treated instrumental elements weaving in and out of the sonic fabric.
This performance is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Dr. Logan Jones & the Mary Jane Hillard Jones Foundation.
Metropolis Ensemble, Erik Hall, Sandbox Percussion - Canto Ostinato Sections 74-87 (Simeon ten Holt)
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.
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.
