Canto Ostinato

Description

I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time in 2020, and it marked the beginning of a true fascination. I was captivated by its unique blend of harmony, repetition, and rhythm. In the spring of 2023, I composed and released my own solo interpretation, thinking at the time that my collaboration with this work was over. But I had underestimated its power of attraction. The following year, I found myself once again under its spell, invited by Andrew Cyr of the Metropolis Ensemble to develop the work I had begun. Shortly after, I found myself in Brooklyn, part of a newly formed team of six musicians with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, excited to contribute to the creation of an entirely new arrangement for a large ensemble of Canto Ostinato, intended for a summer solstice concert at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did it, our group expanding to include students from the Sandbox Percussion summer seminar at The New School, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck, and the Bergamot Quartet. It was an unforgettable day – grand, dreamlike, a perfect culmination. But even then… the work continued to call to us, and it seemed to us that this new orchestration deserved to be the subject of a studio album, a permanent testament to our collective passion. Refined over a year and recorded in New York in 2025, this interpretation reinvents the work within an imposing structure of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our most authentic attempt to convey the beauty and grandeur of Canto Ostinato in all its kaleidoscopic harmony, its dynamism, its tension, and its soothing qualities. I am once again awed by the monumental creation of Simeon ten Holt, and contributing to weave this unique soundscape is one of the greatest pleasures of my musical life. I don’t think we will have this chance again… but who knows… —Erik Hall