For In a Silent Way, which Olsen has described as a kind of written improvisation on a movement from an earlier work, he loaned his title from Miles Davis' classic fusion album of 1969, but also revived what was a profound part of Bach's technique and, in the hands of recent masters such as Luciano Berio, a typically modernist ideal. To this heritage of solo line, presented by the bass flute, Olsen adds the notion of commentary, delivered by accordion, electric guitar, vibraphone, percussion and string trio. This is less an amplification by which, for example, a solo violin prelude becomes an orchestral sinfonia than a linear expansion that dwells on a melody's subtle intervallic content. And, as in Ictus, elements both of fragmentation and repetition are present, but here translated in terms of a broad strophic melody that resonates in points of sound through silence and slow time.

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