Silent Conversation – Brian Lynch

For a description of this song, click on the "Keep Your Circle Small" album cover; our lead sheet is based on that version. This first recording is a very different interpretation as a trumpet/piano duo. Pianist Rob Schneiderman begins with a rubato solo melody chorus. This solo piano setting highlights the vibrant harmonic colors, with almost a classical sound. Brian Lynch comes in to solo for one chorus at a slow swing tempo. The last chorus has a piano solo on the first half, and Brian plays the second half of the out melody. The final two chords are held out, ending on an unresolved C♯/D chord.

More subdued than some other Brian Lynch compositions, Silent Conversation is no less of an adventure. The lyrical melody flows so smoothly that it's easy to overlook this song's detailed complexity. Both the melody and changes are constantly on the move, never touching down in a key center until the final resolution (to F♯ minor) in the last three measures. The melody twists and turns through an impressionistic chord progression, full of deceptive cadences and colorful slash chords—in this case mostly triads over roots a step or third above or below. The form is 32 measures long, ABCD with no repeated sections, though the last four measures of the melody are loosely based on the first four.

Our lead sheet comes from this quartet recording, taken at a medium-slow swing tempo. There is no intro; the last two measures of the out head are tagged three times as a coda (into a final F♯m6 chord at the end), with a triplet-based Latin groove—a "9/8 feel" in 3/4.

This intricate arrangement reimagines Silent Conversation as a Latin song throughout, using the same 9/8 feel heard in the coda of the "Keep Your Circle Small" version. The tag from this coda, alternating between F♯m and C♯/D chords, is included here in each chorus as a six-measure extension of the form. This arrangement has an extended intro and a shout chorus, both harmonically unrelated to the head and solo form; the shout chorus is followed by the second half of the out melody, leading to an arranged coda over the same "tag" vamp. Our audio clip starts with the melody, after the introduction.