Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint
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79176
Track Listing
News & Reviews
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Nonesuch Records releases the first recording of Steve Reich’s Reich/Richter, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain and conducted by George Jackson, on June 10, 2022, with the vinyl due August 5. The composition was originally written to be performed with German visual artist Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz’s film Moving Picture (946-3). Album preorders are available here now. A video of the composer talking about Reich/Richter may be seen here.
Composer Steve Reich is on the Song Exploder podcast to talk with host Hrishikesh Hirway about the first movement of his groundbreaking 1988 piece Different Trains and the childhood experiences that inspired it. The New York Times declared the piece, which Kronos Quartet performed on the Grammy Award–winning first recording, “a work of such originality that ‘breakthrough’ seems the only possible description.” You can hear what he had to say here.
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About This Album
1989 Grammy Award Winner
Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition that year, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition—mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman, and pressed on 140-gram vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands—was released on November 2, 2018, the 30th anniversary of Kronos Quartet's world premiere performance of Different Trains at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. You can watch a new mini-documentary about Different Trains by Robert Edridge-Waks below.
On Different Trains, which combines string quartet with taped speech, Reich evokes his American childhood during World War II while also addressing the Holocaust. The New York Times declared it "a work of such originality that 'breakthrough' seems the only possible description."
Earlier this year, Pitchfork placed Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint at No. 93 on its list of the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s. It's a "late-career masterpiece" for the composer, wrote Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe of Different Trains. "The piece found a new tenor for Reich—clear-eyed, anguished, searching—that suited him. He wasn’t a minimalist upstart anymore; he was a moral conscience, albeit as earthbound and lost as the rest of us."
Electric Counterpoint was written for Pat Metheny, who gave the world premiere performance of the piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in November 1987. The guitarist performs against multiple pre-recorded tape of himself—and "splendidly," said the New York Times. The piece is "filled with jazz and funk-inflected rhythms, reveling in the spirit of American vernacular culture ... [and] finds Mr. Reich capitalizing on his strengths. Here, at the point furthest removed from convention, is where his creative juices flow most freely."
Credits
MUSICIANS
Kronos Quartet (1-3):
David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Joan Jeanrenaud, cello
Pat Metheny, electric guitar (4-6)
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Produced by Judith Sherman
Tracks 1-3 recorded August 31-September 9, 1988 at Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco
Engineer: Les Brockman
Assistant engineer: Michael Ahearn
Mixing engineer: Rob Eaton
Assistant mixing engineer: Ben Fowler
Tracks 4-6 recorded September 26-October 1, 1987, at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: Rob Eaton
Assistant engineer: Gary Solomon
Production assistant: David Oakes
Production coordinator: Jennifer Keats
Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig
Art direction and design: Frank Olinsky
Cover photography: Karl Steinbrenner
Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz
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On the Grammy-winning Different Trains, performed by Kronos Quartet, Reich evokes his American childhood during World War II while also addressing the Holocaust. The New York Times declared it “a work of such originality that ‘breakthrough’ seems the only possible description.” Pat Metheny performs Electric Counterpoint.
1989 Grammy Award Winner
Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition that year, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition—mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman, and pressed on 140-gram vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands—was released on November 2, 2018, the 30th anniversary of Kronos Quartet's world premiere performance of Different Trains at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. You can watch a new mini-documentary about Different Trains by Robert Edridge-Waks below.
On Different Trains, which combines string quartet with taped speech, Reich evokes his American childhood during World War II while also addressing the Holocaust. The New York Times declared it "a work of such originality that 'breakthrough' seems the only possible description."
Earlier this year, Pitchfork placed Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint at No. 93 on its list of the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s. It's a "late-career masterpiece" for the composer, wrote Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe of Different Trains. "The piece found a new tenor for Reich—clear-eyed, anguished, searching—that suited him. He wasn’t a minimalist upstart anymore; he was a moral conscience, albeit as earthbound and lost as the rest of us."
Electric Counterpoint was written for Pat Metheny, who gave the world premiere performance of the piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in November 1987. The guitarist performs against multiple pre-recorded tape of himself—and "splendidly," said the New York Times. The piece is "filled with jazz and funk-inflected rhythms, reveling in the spirit of American vernacular culture ... [and] finds Mr. Reich capitalizing on his strengths. Here, at the point furthest removed from convention, is where his creative juices flow most freely."
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Produced by Judith Sherman
Tracks 1-3 recorded August 31-September 9, 1988 at Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco
Engineer: Les Brockman
Assistant engineer: Michael Ahearn
Mixing engineer: Rob Eaton
Assistant mixing engineer: Ben Fowler
Tracks 4-6 recorded September 26-October 1, 1987, at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: Rob Eaton
Assistant engineer: Gary Solomon
Production assistant: David Oakes
Production coordinator: Jennifer Keats
Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig
Art direction and design: Frank Olinsky
Cover photography: Karl Steinbrenner
Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

79176
MUSICIANS
Kronos Quartet (1-3):
David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Joan Jeanrenaud, cello
Pat Metheny, electric guitar (4-6)