What does it sound like when you give every train in New York City an instrument?

WBUR | By Here & Now Newsroom

Published May 25, 2026 at 11:53 AM EDT

A subway train pulls into a station in New York, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (Seth Wenig/AP)

The B line on the New York City subway is a tenor saxophone. The A is a jazz trombone. And the No. 3 line is an upright bass.

Joshua Wolk is a designer and engineer who assigned different instruments to every train in New York City, creating a small jazz combo that plays on an interactive website.

Here & Now‘s Indira Lakshmanan speaks with Wolk about what inspired him to do this.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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