Steve Reich: Different Trains

Steve Reich, the great American contemporary composer, provided
this program note about his work Different Trains: “The idea for
the piece came from my childhood. When I was one year old my
parents separated. My singer, song-writer mother moved to Los
Angeles and my attorney father stayed in New York. Since they
arranged divided custody, I travelled back and forth by train
frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942
accompanied by my governess. While the trips were exciting and
romantic at the time I now look back and think that, if I had
been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to
ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a
piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation.”


Reich went about this piece in a completely innovative way: he
recorded voices and then created the musical material for the
piece out of the voices themselves, something that had never been
done before. Therefore, the text and music material were
integrated in a groundbreaking way, and the results are at times
unbearably moving. This is a piece that has captured listeners
attention in a way that is relatively rare for contemporary
music, and it is a piece of immense power and depth. I have
always been fascinated by this piece and have wanted to perform
an orchestral version of it, but I never have been able to cover
it on the show. That is, until AJ contributed enough to my
fundraiser last year before the election to sponsor a piece, and
he chose Reich’s Different Trains. Today we’ll talk a bit about
Steve Reich generally for those of you unfamiliar with him, and
then we’ll tackle this remarkable and unique piece in all of its
creativity and profound communication. Join us!