This week, the Ether Game Brain Trust is heading downtown to explore some musical cities. Grab your metrocard, because this show is called "Metropolis."

Some musical connections to different cities on this episode...

• PARIS: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his "Paris" symphony during his second visit to the city, when he was 22. He first visited it when he was 9 years old, when he performed and composed his very first two published works there.
• AMSTERDAM: Richard Strauss dedicated his tone poem Ein Heldenleben to the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the only city where he thought his work was properly performed.
• LONDON: Paul Hindemith wrote his piece Trauermusik during a trip to London, and the work was written for King George V, who passed away just as Hindemith arrived.
• NEWYORK: New York City native and minimalist composer Steve Reich is often grouped as one of the "downtown composers," a group of late 20th-century experimental composers who tried new ideas that opposed the  work being down in "uptown" NYC (like at Juilliard or Carnegie Hall).
• ISTANBUL: The song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by the Four Lads (and later performed by They Might Be Giants) is about the then recent name change to the Turkish city, which had at least 3 other names in its storied history.

See the full playlist below: