Listen to “NoteSpeak (In a Word)” and you can feel the years behind it. Poet and lyricist Lisa Marie Simmons and pianist Marco Cremaschini didn’t just make a record. They built a world that refuses to stay put, that bends between jazz and hip-hop and gospel and something that doesn’t have a name yet. Jazz, spoken word, electronica, gospel, free verse, cinematic arrangement. All of it moving together naturally, like it was always meant to.
What strikes me first is how alive it feels. This isn’t a record that’s been focus-grouped or overthought. It’s two people who have spent years learning how to listen to each other, and it shows.
The album opens with “Intro”, a gong piece by Christof Bernhard that sets something in motion. From there, Simmons and Cremaschini draw in an extraordinary range of voices. Gillian Margot, who has shared stages with Sting and Robert Glasper, brings real presence to “Once Upon This Time”. Jamaaladeen Tacuma shows up on “Taijitu”, the bassist whose work with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time band became a north star for anyone who cares about where jazz was headed. Vernon Reid of Living Colour adds something unmistakable to “Solid Ground (Meet Me There)” and the closing “Outro”. Charu Suri, the first Indian-born jazz composer to perform at Carnegie Hall, brings a compelling quietness to “Winner Takes All”. Dorian Holley and Nayanna Holley duet on “No Time at All”, two voices that have backed some of the biggest productions of the past two decades.
And then there’s “Solid Ground (Meet Me There)” with The Flamingos. Theresa Trigg and Terry Isaiah Johnson. That name matters to anyone who knows American music history. Johnson, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who arranged the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You”, passed away on October 8, 2025, twelve days after this album came out. This is one of his final recordings. You need to hear it.
The working band is tight. Simmons, Cremaschini on piano and keyboards, Manuel Caliumi on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, Marco Cocconi on electric bass, and Federico Negri on drums, with Laura Masotto adding violin to “Submersion”. You can hear them trust each other in the way the music breathes and shifts.
Simmons grew up in Boulder, made her mark in New York, and now lives in Italy. Cremaschini brings a deep European jazz sensibility into everything he touches. Together they’ve built what peers have started calling a global jazz hybrid, which is fair enough, but it doesn’t quite capture it. The record moves from tender, interior moments to passages that burn with real intention. The lyrics carry personal and political weight in equal measure. This is music that trusts you to keep up.
Their last record, “Amori e Tragedie In Musica” (2020 on Ropeadope), found an audience and surprised even them with how far it traveled. Since then, Simmons made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2025 with Charu Suri to a sold out crowd and an invitation to come back. The project has moved beyond music too. In 2024, Simmons wrote an original poem responding to work by Phoebe Boswell, the British-Kenyan artist, for Boswell’s show at Wentrup Gallery in Berlin. Both artists share deep engagement with memory and identity and the weight of where we are now. It felt like two people recognizing something in each other.
DownBeat gave this five stars. J. Poet noted how Simmons moves between singing and speaking, blurring the line between poetry and music in a way that feels completely natural. All About Jazz went four stars through senior editor Chris May, who put the album on the same level as its predecessor, describing it as top-shelf poetry and top-shelf jazz working at equal strength. Chris Slawecki connected NoteSpeak to a line running from jazz poets like Ishmael Reed through Queen Latifah, which is about the most thoughtful frame you could get.
The influences are everywhere. Nina Simone, Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, John and Alice Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Marvin Gaye, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde. Then on another shelf entirely: Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco. Moving through the contemporary: Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, Vijay Iyer, Rhiannon Giddens, Anderson Paak.
It’s a long list but it doesn’t feel like name-dropping. It feels like someone telling you the truth. You hear all of it in the record, not as imitation but as the weight of a life spent paying close attention to what music and language can actually do when you treat them seriously.
