Lisa Marie Simmons, Notespeak (In a Word) | Album Review

L

isa Marie Simmons and Marco Cremaschini’s latest moves through thirteen tracks like a conversation you didn’t plan to have but can’t leave. This is their third album together, and it shows the kind of comfort that only comes from years of paying attention to each other in a room.

The record opens with a gong, Christof Bernhard’s instrument cutting through the quiet, and from there it’s clear we’re in careful hands. Simmons grew up in Boulder, built her voice in New York, and now works from Italy. Cremaschini brings European jazz sensibilities to the piano and keys. Together they’ve pulled together something their peers have started calling global jazz hybrid, which works as a frame if you’re looking for one, but the music itself doesn’t much care about categories.

Gillian Margot, who’s sung with Sting and Robert Glasper, steps into “Once Upon This Time” like she’s been waiting for the space. Jamaaladeen Tacuma’s bass on “Taijitu” carries the weight of decades in avant-garde jazz, all the way back to Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time. Vernon Reid from Living Colour brings something unmistakable to two tracks. Then there’s the closing, which features Terry Isaiah Johnson of The Flamingos. Johnson passed away twelve days after this album came out in September. His voice here, in one of his final recordings, carries a kind of gravity that’s hard to describe without sounding like you’re reaching.

The core band holds steady throughout. Manuel Caliumi on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, Marco Cocconi on electric bass, Federico Negri on drums. They move together like they’ve been in the same van for weeks. Laura Masotto adds violin to “Submersion,” and the trust between all of them shows in how the music actually breathes instead of just moving forward.

Simmons flows between singing and speaking without announcing it. The lyrics hit personal and political notes at the same time, and the music shifts underneath to match the weight of what she’s saying. You hear Nina Simone and Gil Scott-Heron in the DNA, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis in the architecture, but also Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan threading through. It’s a long lineage, but it doesn’t feel like name-dropping. It feels like someone who’s actually listened to everything and understood what it meant.

You can take a listen to “Notespeak (In a Word)” by Lisa Marie Simmons here. 

Four out of five – George James. 

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