Not long after the first part of the New York Subway system was built in 1904, the pop singer Billy Murray recorded “Down in the Subway,” which suggested that the new netherworld was good for more than transportation. According to the song’s anonymous lyricist, this was “just the place for spooning all the season ’round” – a spot where young lovers could get away from prying eyes and henpecked husbands could escape their battle-axe wives.

It’s been decades since people thought of the New York subway in those terms, but musicians are still celebrating it 102 years later. Two albums have just pulled into the station: “Subway Songs” (Sunnyside) by the Metta Quintet and “The Subway Ballet” (Evening Star) by Randy Sandke and the Metatonal Big Band. Apart from their preoccupation with variations on the suffix “meta,” these albums resemble each other in that they consist exclusively of original compositions, some in suite form, and make creative use of extra-musical sound effects.And both incorporate the “melody” most familiar to millions of straphangers – the two notes of E going down a major third to C – in various permutations.

The Metta Quintet is the ensemble in residence of the Brooklyn-based JazzReach Performing Arts & Education Association; both the band and the organization are led by drummer and composer H. Benjamin Schuman. The rest of the quintet consists of Marcus Strickland, tenor and soprano saxophones; Mark Gross, alto saxophone; Helen Sung, piano; and Joshua Ginsberg, bass. “Subway Songs” comprises nine tracks, including compositions by nearly all the members of the group, as well as several other dynamic young musician-composers affiliated with JazzReach, such as the saxophonist Myron Walden and pianist John Cowherd.

The album opens with Mr. Schuman’s “Morning Rush (Stand Clear of the Closing Doors),” which gets underway with what sounds like a roaring train at first, but is actually the noise of a digital alarm clock. Over a tense bass line, you hear a commuter preparing to board the train to get to work – coffee percolating, water pouring into a sink, the noise of fellow passengers on the platform. Then, over this musique concrete, the subway theme arrives, dark and big and heavy and fast, with the two saxophones in tight, well-executed unison.

The next track, Mr. Walden’s “Underground,” is slower – as if the train were grinding to a halt. The two saxophones each execute a variation on the two-note theme in round harmony before coming together. Another highlight is pianist Helen Sung’s “Fast Forward,” a medium tempo piece in which the rhythm section, playing a modified funk vamp, serves as the tracks, while the two saxophones are the cars racing down them.

Mr. Cowherd’s three-part “Subway Suite” forms the center of the album. The first movement is a train ride written in a minor key and in three-four time, with the alto stating the melody before being joined by the tenor; it’s reminiscent of Jewish music, suggesting the train might be traveling under South Williamsburg.The second part is even slower, a luxurious ride that feels more like a Pullman car than the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and it is connected to the third by the low-level sound effect of a subway car chugging down the rails.The third part – which sounds like the express train to the second part’s local – features a vaguely modal, two-note vamp reminiscent of Wayne Shorter’s early writing for the Jazz Messengers.

The “Subway Suite” shows how a work for quintet, with improvisation no less, can rival extended compositions for large-format ensembles. All three movements travel clearly from place to place, and each is substantially more than a fundamental melodysolos-melody blowing vehicle.

Mr. Sandke, too, specializes in longform compositions. In 1985, his first album as a leader was “New York Stories,” an eight-part suite for jazz sextet. “The Subway Ballet,” which had its premiere three years ago at the 92nd St. Y, is a considerably more ambitious 46-minute work in 14 sections for a full-size big band of four trumpets (including the composer), five reeds, four trombones, four rhythm instruments including a vibraphone, and a guest appearance by recording engineer Jim Czak as “the voice of the motorman” at the start of the first track.

Mr. Sandke’s conceit is that the subway can serve as a metaphor for the various neighborhoods of Manhattan, starting at the bottom of the island and gradually winding its way uptown. The ballet is divided between riding passages that represent the train in motion (“Electriglide,” “Steel Wheels”) and stops along the way, which are neighborhood-specific dances.

Mr. Sandke explains in the notes that he set this particular ride in the 1980s, back when the cars were still covered with graffiti and Mohawkwearing punks rode the rails. Appropriately, the piece begins with the “Dance of the Downtown Punks,” which showcases the darker instruments, including baritone sax and deep,Wagnerian trombones.The beat, however, is more funk than punk.

Downtown is also the setting for “Dance of the Wall Street Brokers,” who move cautiously amid the combination of flutes and a harmon-muted trumpet. Meanwhile, percussionist Erik Charlston produces a snapping sound that represents, according to the composer’s liner notes, the Goddess Mamon dressed like a dominatrix in leather, cracking the whip above the brokers’ heads.

The two most evocative dances are ethnically inspired. The “Dance of the Chasidic Diamond Merchant,” which features the famous Klezmer clarinet soloist David Krakauer as a guest star, is a highly successful attempt to fuse Klezmer with big band jazz. When I say that this pentatonic-sounding minor piece reminds me of the overture to “Fiddler on the Roof,” I mean that as a compliment.

“The Blind Beggar Encounters the Korean Peddler” is a humorous scene in which two underground characters collide with each other. Mr. Sandke portrays the first by growling on the trumpet, and the second is a juxtapo sition of flutes, Asian chimes, and saxophones inspired by Duke Ellington’s setting of Tchaikovsky’s “Chinese Dance.”

The piece ends at “125th Street,” again signaled by Mr. Czak as the motorman: There’s all kinds of music to be heard up here, from funk to gospel to salsa to blues – and if that weren’t enough, saxophonist Scott Robinson wails an avant-garde tenor solo to con vey uptown confusion. Mr. Sandke uses the 125th Street station as the symbolic connecting point of all these sounds and ideas, sometimes superimposing different sounds and melodies deliberately on top of each other. It’s as thorough a portrait, visual or musical, of the city that never sleeps – and the transportation system that serves as its most vital, pulsating artery – as I have ever experienced.