For those of you who don’t know Steve Reich, i’ll give you a very brief introduction. Reich was born in 1936 in New York City but often traveled to California because his parent’s were divorced.  He attended Juilliard (1958-1961) and then attended Mills College and earned his master’s degree in composition.  His works are dated back to 1963 and he continues to produce music to this day.  I suggest looking into Steve Reich’s life more because it is very interesting. According to The Guardian, Reich is ”a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history.”

Now moving on to the topic at hand, Reich’s album ‘Different Trains’ which was released in 1988 in a period of Reich’s life that people say his music had more of a darker undertone to it.  He introduced historical themes into his music as well as his Jewish heritage.  The title of the album comes from the fact that Reich had to travel between New York and California on a train to visit his parents.  He later thought of that fact that he may be riding on the Holocaust Trains if he had lived in Europe. Therefore you get a very emotional story of life during World War II.   The music for the strings makes extensive use of paradiddles rhythms, with alternating pitches instead of alternating drum sticking. In addition to speech, the piece includes recordings of train sounds, as well as of sirens and warning bells.  The basis of the album are the melodious speech recordings throughout it.  Trains won a Grammy Award in 1989 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.  I highly recommend you give this album a listen as well as all of Reich’s other works.  ’Music for 18 Musicians’ and ‘Drumming’ are also amazing albums.