Sandbox Percussion's "Canto Ostinato" album featured on NPR

Sandbox Percussion, the GRAMMY-nominated ensemble celebrated for its commitment to contemporary chamber music, partnered with Metropolis Ensemble and Erik Hall to record a new large-ensemble arrangement of Simeon ten Holt's landmark minimalist piece Canto Ostinato.

NPR's Tom Huizenga picked the album (out now on Western Vinyl) for its best-of list for the first half of 2026 (including a wide variety of genres). “Every time I hear it, this 50-year-old piece of Dutch minimalism, composed by Simeon ten Holt, sweeps me off my feet with its meditative, swirling eddies of sound,” he writes.

As in the clock-like cycles of our lives, its rhythms and melodic cells intertwine and recycle. But there's also freedom in the music, as the composer imagined it dressed in various arrangements. This new version, for mallet instruments, winds, strings and piano, undulates with delicate ripples of sound that crest in large waves only to recede and rise again. It's music to get lost in.

Congratulations to Sandbox Percussion, Metropolis Ensemble, and Erik Hall!

Listen to the album here: lnk.to/cantoostinato2026

Check out the full NPR piece here.