“Canto Ostinato”: Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center

A New York premiere and co-production between AMOC* and Sandbox Percussion, Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato feels like the long-lost cousin of beloved American Minimalist works like Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians or Terry Riley’s In C. Encountering it for the first time is like meeting an unknown relative, you’re struck by uncanny resemblances: the tilt of a nose, the rhythm of a laugh, echoes that stretch across time and space.

With AMOC* members Matthew Aucoin, Conor Hanick, and Jonny Allen alongside Sandbox, Canto Ostinato radiates the warmth, spaciousness, and quiet luminosity of the best minimalist music. It offers both freedom and structure: a world shaped by softly chiming pulses and deeply satisfying harmonic shifts, where performers navigate personal interpretation within a familiar framework. For some, the piece may evoke the stillness of sacred music; for others, it feels like an invitation to collective meditation. Beloved in the Netherlands, where it premiered, Canto Ostinato holds a universal appeal that invites discovery far beyond its homeland, its patient, shifting light promises to resonate just as profoundly with audiences everywhere.

Sandbox Percussion: Jonny Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, Terry Sweeney

Matthew Aucoin and Conor Hanick, pianos