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.

"Dark Blue" was recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs.

Other songs on this album add Ralph Moore on tenor sax, Peter Washington on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums. Rob Schneiderman's fifth album as a leader, "Dark Blue" is the second of four so far featuring Brian Lynch. The fourth of these, 2015's "Tone Twister" (with Moore again on tenor), was released on Lynch's label Hollistic MusicWorks.

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.

"Keep Your Circle Small" was Brian Lynch's fifth album as a leader, and the first of five quartet albums so far. It's also the only recording with Brian alongside Louis Hayes, as well as the drummer's first with pianist David Hazeltine. Hazeltine, Hayes and Peter Washington are the "Classic Trio;" check out Hazeltine's compositions from "Classic Trio" and "Classic Trio Vol. II". Hazeltine also played on Hayes' most recent album, 2022's "Exactly Right!"