Steve Reich's "Different Trains" (1988) has often been regarded as the composer's masterpiece. Certainly, this New Sounds Live performance from Merkin Hall makes a strong case as such. The work layers acoustic and taped material to great effect as it frames Reich's impressions of his boyhood train trips between his mother in Los Angeles and his father in New York. It also intersperses references to the much more harrowing train rides Jews were forced to take to Nazi concentration camps. Both references are evoked by musings of Holocaust survivors, a retired Pullman porter and vintage train sounds from the 1930s and '40s.

PROGRAM # 2083 (First aired on Tuesday, October 15, 2002)

ARTIST(S)	RECORDING	CUT(S)	SOURCE
John Zorn	Filmworks XI	Secret Lives: Yesoma [3:00], B'rachos [3:30]	Tzadik #7339** www.tzadik.com *
Steve Reich	New Sounds Live, Jan. 7, 1999	Different Trains [27:00]	Kronos Quartet's recording of this piece is available on Nonesuch Records**, www.nonesuch.com *
Roger Kleier	Deep Night, Deep Autumn	We Speak of Deep Night [8:30]	Starkland #211. www.starkland.com *
Bowing (Martha Mooke & Randolph Hudson)	Café Mars	Blue Steel [9:00]	2105AD Records, due for November release. Info at www.marthamooke.com

*,** Find the recordings you've heard - go to the New Sounds Recordings Information page