Simeon ten Holt was a Dutch composer known for his distinctive minimalist style, marked by tonal harmony, repetition, and a blurring of structure and spontaneity. Canto Ostinato, completed in 1976 and first performed on April 25, 1979 at the Ruïnekerk in Bergen, Holland, remains his most celebrated work. On June 20, 2024, an expanded version was conceived and developed by Andrew Cyr, Erik Hall, and Jonny Allen/Sandbox Percussion for Metropolis Ensemble's "Biophony: Solstice", at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, transforming the piece into a meditative, communal experience that reaches beyond music.

In Holt’s performance notes, he writes, "A performance of Canto is more like a ritual than a concert. The piece is not in a hurry and has in common with so called minimal music that one cannot speak of fixed duration. As stated the first performance lasted two hours but it could have easily been more or less."

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