Canto Ostinato in the Garden

In 2020, a friend first told me about Canto Ostinato, the 1979 longform minimalist masterpiece for four pianos by the late Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt. I had just released a solo interpretation of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians — a longtime desert-island piece for me — and this particular friend has a knack for knowing what will be up my alley. (Or just what’s undeniably great.)

He was right. Within a year I had logged countless hours listening to the wondrous 1984 Vredenburg concert recording, with its sprawling explorations in harmony, repetition, tension, and release. I decided once again to try my hand at learning and recording the piece myself. 

Thankfully, the work was a good fit. My rendition was subsequently released in 2023, and the New York Times was kind enough to include me in an article highlighting what would have been the composer’s centennial year. Soon after, I received a call from Andrew Cyr, of New York City’s Metropolis Ensemble, reporting that he’d learned of me and of the piece, and was wondering whether he was crazy to think that we might arrange it for 50 musicians and perform it outside at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on the summer solstice. I told him, “Maybe — but we still have to do it.” 

Having produced large-scale concerts with the Garden before, he had a sense of what it would entail, and he had already secured interest from Brooklyn’s Sandbox Percussion as well as an additional cohort of extremely qualified instrumentalists. I had yet to perform the piece live in any place so much as a gazebo, so for me, the idea was an unflinching no-brainer.

So on this year’s solstice, on Thursday, June 20, we will unveil a world-premiere arrangement of Canto Ostinato for 30 mallet percussionists; four keyboards (Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, Moog synthesizer, and organ); and 16 woodwinds and strings. It will be the culmination of Metropolis’ ongoing series with the garden entitled Biophony. And there will be two performances: 5 AM at sunrise and 7:30 PM at sunset, each of which aims to uniquely juxtapose the beauty of the Garden with the expansive nature of the composition.

Having been recording and touring in bands for most my adult life, I myself am not exactly active in any particular classical music scene at the moment. These past two albums have been solitary experiments in my home studio in rural southwestern Michigan. So while I’m thrilled by the invitation to the project, I am also deeply humbled, as it calls on a rather more-formal musical muscle that I haven’t flexed since my school years. Which is why I’m grateful and exhilarated to be teamed with some of the best musicians I’ve ever worked with. Jonny Allen and the rest of Sandbox Percussion took a head-first deep dive into learning the piece and adapting it for 30 mallet players. Violinist Ledah Finck and saxophonist David Leon are creating masterful string and woodwind arrangements, and Benjamin Wallace is meticulously translating our entire vision into elegant, individual parts (all while holding down the Moog). 

We wanted to be sure to avoid certain pitfalls. When taking a prized and perfectly-complete work and blowing it up in size, there are certainly additive models out there that emphasize spectacle or fanfare (a la Canto Ostinato: Symphonic Live!… Canto Ostinato ON ICE!… et al). No. We rather saw it as an opportunity to highlight and enhance the many layers that are already present in the original score. There is inherent kaleidoscopic depth to this music. By keeping the individual parts very simple and doling the score out among a broad and rich palette, the intended effect is indeed an increase in scale, but also in color, vividness, and resolution. 

All the while, we’ve been revisiting our intentions. In the Netherlands, Canto Ostinato has been recorded dozens of times and is performed regularly in myriad instrumentations and settings. Meanwhile, Metropolis Ensemble is an entity typically found championing new music created by living composers. Nonetheless, we feel wholeheartedly that Canto is a piece that we need to celebrate. As contemporary classical fanboys and girls, there’s been an uncanny consistency among each of us involved in both our excitement for this piece as well as our individual disbelief that we didn’t hear it sooner in life. It was new to me; it was new to Andrew; it was new to Sandbox. It will likely be new to the vast majority of our concert audience. For lovers of Reich, Glass, and Riley, there is simply zero reason to miss Simeon ten Holt. So while the undertaking of this piece is for our own pleasure and gratification, it also feels like our humble role in helping to continue to introduce the composer to an American audience. And in the streaming age, I’m frankly amazed and refreshed to find that there is still 50-year old music out there for one to discover and receive as if it were written for them alone.

Another friend of mine and I have a motto: “Doing stuff is hard, but doing stuff is worth it.” We tend to reprise this refrain any time we’re engaged in the grunt work of making a record, or schlepping cases and amplifiers from a van into a venue. I’m happy to say that this sentiment tracks with the modus operandi of Metropolis Ensemble. It is apparent to me that Andrew is one of us and that he understands the value and significance of making something happen; the value of creating a unique event to simply be experienced. For the audience, and for the performers, that worth is equal and communal.

So here is my sincere thanks to everyone involved, everyone attending, and to anyone for reading. And when these words have long been published and the concert has come and gone, I’m happy to know that there will still be stacks of renditions of Canto to be discovered by all.