Steve Reich's latest Nonesuch release, WTC 9/11, has made NPR Music's list of its ten Favorite Classical Albums of 2011. The album's title piece is Reich's reflection on the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. It is scored for three string quartets, performed by Kronos Quartet, and pre-recorded voices, including NORAD air traffic controllers, first responders, and women who kept vigil over the dead. The album also includes Reich’s Mallet Quartet, performed by Sō Percussion, and Dance Patterns, featuring members of Steve Reich and Musicians.

"WTC 9/11, played by the Kronos Quartet, is one of the most gripping, intense, intelligent, emotionally honest and artistically successful works to come out of the tragedy," exclaims Anastasia Tsioulcas, co-host of NPR's classical music blog, Deceptive Cadence. "But I'd also like to turn attention to the wonderful Mallet Quartet that appears on this album. Written in 2009 and performed here by one of the piece's co-commissioners, New York's superb So Percussion, the Mallet Quartet possesses a quiet beauty that, almost despite its subtleties, demands to be heard."

Read more and hear clips from NPR Music's Favorite Classical Albums of 2011 on the Deceptive Cadence blog at npr.org.

To pick up a copy of WTC 9/11, head to the Nonesuch Store, where all CDs are 34% off SRP for the store's fourth-anniversary sale. CD orders of WTC 9/11 also include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout.

Kronos Quartet performs WTC 9/11 in their next several scheduled concerts in January, including the Polish and French premieres of the piece. For more information, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour.