Different Trains is a composition for string quartet and tape completed in 1988 by American composer Steve Reich (1936). During World War II, Reich made train journeys between New York and Los Angeles to visit his parents, who had separated. Years later, he pondered the fact that, as a Jew, had he been in Europe instead of the United States at that time, he might have been travelling in Holocaust trains. Different Trains uses a 'live' string quartet, as well as recordings of speeches, train sounds, sirens and warning bells, as well as prerecorded multiple lines by the string quartet. The three part work has an average playing time of 27 minutes (AllMusic). I have three versions, with a strong preference for the one by the Kronos Quartet on a Nonesuch CD.
