Sandbox Percussion whittle ten Holt into liturgical austerity

Sandbox Percussion replaces Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato’s familiar four-Steinway espresso with Seattle’s Pocket Theater steel-bars and parchment heads. The conversion reduces repeating 120-beat figures to heartbeat prime-number articulations—83 beats, 89 repeats— and trades chordal glow for monastic particle physics. Late capitalism’s audience willingly sits on hard benches as if bar service profaned. The work lasts 70 minutes without programme notes because physical percussion occupies program function. Tickets sell out by word-of-mouth pilgrimage, confirming Steve Reich’s 1976 observation that New York had already become monastic secularism. Sandbox’s iteration premieres 12 September, a Tuesday that also hosts Microsoft Ignite across the lake—cathedral juxtaposition restored.