Steve Reich

Featuring: Kronos Quartet, Pat Metheny

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert included.

The breakthrough record of Reich's late career, and the one that won him the 1990 Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition. Different Trains (1988), Side A, scored for string quartet plus pre-recorded tape of voices and trains, sets fragments of speech from Reich's childhood governess Virginia Mitchell, Pullman porter Lawrence Davis, three Holocaust survivors (Rachella, Paul and Rachel), and archival train sounds. The string quartet doubles the speech melodies that Reich derived from the recorded fragments. Three movements: America-Before the War, Europe-During the War, After the War. Recorded August-September 1988 at Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco, by the Kronos Quartet (David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt, Joan Jeanrenaud). Casio FZ-1 and FZ10M samplers handled the speech.

Side B is Electric Counterpoint (1987), commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival for Pat Metheny: ten pre-recorded guitar parts plus two electric basses, with Metheny playing the eleventh live against the tape. Recorded September-October 1987 at Power Station, New York. Produced by Judith Sherman.