Sandbox Percussion: "Canto Ostinato" Casts a Musical Spell at Cal Performances

Sandbox Percussion and AMOC* and perform Canto Ostinato at Lincoln Center, June 25, 2025. Credit: Lawrence Sumulong

Sandbox Percussion and American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), gave a spectacular performance of Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato on Sunday, Feb. 22, under the auspices of Cal Performances at Zellerbach Playhouse in Berkeley.

Canto Ostinato is a layered, shimmering minimalist work from the 1970s that has earned a dedicated following in ten Holt’s native Netherlands, and is realized here by the four mallet percussionists of Sandbox, joined by AMOC members Conor Hanick and Matthew Aucoin on piano. As envisioned by these sterling interpreters, ten Holt’s hypnotic instrumental score unfurls in an emotional dramatic arc during an afternoon-length sonic journey.

“It was a sonically magical combination,” reports Lisa Hirsch for the San Francisco Chronicle. “Percussion instruments they may be, but together they created a wash of sound that was, paradoxically, both exciting and soothing. The music demanded attention, even as it verged on the hypnotic.”

The musical texture shifted from time to time, with instruments dropping out and coming back in. When all of the instruments played, the sound could pierce you, obliterating thought and leaving only sensation. Sometimes it felt like a great epic was being recited in the distance, the words incomprehensible.

Read the full piece here.