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Different Trains

Wednesday 7.August

20:00

Nordland Music Festival: Bodø Railway Station

At this concert the audience will experience one of the most special compositions in music history, which also has a serious topic. As a child, Steve Reich travelled a lot by train in America, because his parents got divorced and moved to different coasts. Therefore, his relationship with trains is both nostalgic and romantic. When Reich wrote Different Trains in 1988, he began to think that the fond memories of trains that he had as a child in 1942 and 1943 would have been very different if he had lived in Europe at the same time. Since his parents were Jewish, he would probably have been on his last train journey – on Different Trains.

This amazing piece for string quartet has three movements; America before the war, Europe during the war, and after the war. In addition to the string quartet, we will be hearing authentic sounds from the American and German train, and fragments of voices from people that Reich interviewed.

Nordland has a long railway history with the Ofot and Nordland train sets. The county also has a dramatic war story where Nordland was the county in Norway with the most prisoners of war. A lot of which helped construct the Nordland railroad. Historian Steinar Aas will tell Nordlands railway story, linked to the three movements in Different Trains.

The event will start at Bodø Railway station and the audience will be transported in trains to and from the venue. It will be possible to buy refreshments at the event.

Contributing

Steinar Aas – historian

Cikada String Quartet

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