Steve Reich’s Different Trains Returns to Liverpool 10 Years After Landmark Edge Hill Performance

A landmark piece of Liverpool’s recent musical history will be revisited this October as Steve Reich’s Different Trains returns to the city, ten years after an extraordinary performance at Edge Hill Station.

On Saturday 10 October 2026, Metal and Liverpool Philharmonic will mark the anniversary with a special performance at the Tung Auditorium, presented in partnership with Liverpool Philharmonic’s contemporary music ensemble, the 10:10 Ensemble.

The event comes exactly a decade after Metal partnered with Sound Intermedia, Liverpool Biennial and Southbank Centre to stage Different Trains at Edge Hill Station in September 2016.

Performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra and accompanied by a film created in response to the piece by acclaimed filmmaker Bill Morrison, the site-specific performance was livestreamed around the world and became a memorable moment in Liverpool’s musical history.

Now, Different Trains will return in a new setting – and at another significant moment for its composer, Steve Reich.

The original Liverpool performance took place just days before Reich’s 80th birthday, with the composer himself present at Edge Hill Station. The 2026 performance takes place in the month of his 90th birthday.

Jenny Porter, Director of Metal Liverpool, said: “Reflecting on 10 years since the original staging of the Different Trains concert is a powerful experience. So much has changed in the past decade, it is important to remind ourselves of the humanity behind the music of Different Trains. Sharing together a contemporary response to this work in 2026 promises to be a unique and memorable night.”

Composed in 1988 for string quartet and tape, Different Trains was inspired by Reich’s childhood train journeys between New York and Los Angeles during the Second World War.

Looking back on those journeys, Reich reflected that had he been living in Europe at the time, as a Jewish child, the trains he travelled on could have had a very different destination.

The work combines recorded speech, train sounds and strings to explore memory, movement and the contrasting experiences of people living through the same period of history.

For its return to Liverpool, the programme will place Reich’s influential work alongside a new generation of composers and artists from Liverpool and the North West.

The evening will feature the world premiere of Into the Aether, a new composition by Andrew Barney, winner of Liverpool Philharmonic’s annual Rushworth Composition Prize.

Audiences will also hear work by Rushworth composers Nneka Cummins and Grace Evangeline Mason, alongside music from Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company alumnus and Artist in Residence Mark Simpson.

Vanessa Reed, Chief Executive of Liverpool Philharmonic, said: “Ten years ago, thousands of people experienced Steve Reich and Bill Morrison’s Different Trains at Edge Hill Station – an important collaboration between two seminal American artists, commissioned by our friends at Metal and Liverpool Biennial.

“Our 10:10 performance at The Tung offers audiences another opportunity to experience the remarkable work live, alongside brand new pieces by composers from Liverpool and the North West.”

The anniversary isn’t simply a recreation of the 2016 event.

Metal has also commissioned artists Rebecca Ainsworth and Abdullrhman Hassona, the 2026 LCR Culture & Creativity Awards Artist of the Year, to create a new work responding to experiences of travel across Liverpool, the North West and around the world.

It adds another contemporary perspective to a programme connecting an internationally significant piece of music with Liverpool’s own artists and composers.

Vanessa Reed added: “Liverpool is a city with an extraordinary creative spirit, home to a wealth of talented composers, artists and cultural organisations who come together to create ambitious new work.

“This programme is a celebration of that spirit, bringing together music that has its roots here in Liverpool and the North West with a landmark work that has a special place in the city’s cultural history.”

Ten years after musicians gathered on the platform at Edge Hill Station, Different Trains returns to Liverpool for an evening connecting the city’s musical past with new compositions, artistic voices and contemporary experiences of travel.

Steve Reich’s Different Trains takes place at the Tung Auditorium on Saturday 10 October 2026. The performance is sold out.