Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint

Nonesuch Records’ 1989 recording of Steve Reich’s Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl.
The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively.
The vinyl edition is released on the 30th anniversary of Kronos Quartet’s world premiere performance of Different Trains at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
The New York Times declared Different Trains “a work of such originality that ‘breakthrough’ seems the only possible description.” Pitchfork recently called it a “late-career masterpiece,” including the album among the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s.

Steve Reich has been hailed as “America’s greatest living composer” (The Village Voice), “the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), and “among the great composers of the century” (New York Times).
From his early taped speech pieces It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) to his and video artist Beryl Korot’s digital video opera Three Tales (2002), Reich’s path has embraced not only aspects of Western Classical music, but the structures, harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz.

“There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history, and Steve Reich is one of them.” – The Guardian (London)