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Jazz Articles about Lisa Marie Simmons

About Lisa Marie Simmons

Album Review

Lisa Marie Simmons: NoteSpeak (In a Word)

Read "NoteSpeak (In a Word)" reviewed by Acacia Grace

by Acacia Grace
August 26, 2026

Lisa Marie Simmons has a story to tell, and she tells it through melody, harmony, spoken word, lively woodwinds, jazz-inflected instrumentation, and a cast of special guests in NoteSpeak (In a Word). This is a unique vocal project, one that feels as much like a work of jazzy poetry and storytelling as it does a traditional album. And Simmons has a way with words throughout the entire project. For NoteSpeak (In a Word)there is a lot happening ...

Album Review

Lisa Marie Simmons: Notespeak 12

Read "Notespeak 12" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 3, 2023

Poetry & Jazz has a checkered history. When combined, the two art forms are not so much a marriage made in heaven as an obstacle course. The biggest danger is that one of them is verbal and the other is non-verbal and at its best transcends words. The second danger is that the better the poetry and/or the jazz in question, the more intrusive may be their competing demands for the listener's attention. Notespeak 12 is top-end poetry ...

Album Review

Viktor Haraszti: Equanimity: A Futuristic Jazz Tale

Read "Equanimity: A Futuristic Jazz Tale" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 17, 2022

Equanimity: A Futuristic Jazz Tale is the debut album from Viktor Haraszti, a Hungarian-born, Dutch-based tenor saxophonist and composer. It is a solo project, recorded in isolation in 2021, on which Haraszti also plays clarinet, EWI, flute and keyboards. Bad Plus drummer Dave King helps out on one track, drummer Marshall Curtly on another three, and poet Lisa Marie Simmons adds spoken word to a further two. As the title suggests, the music is a suite. It ...

Interview

Lisa Marie Simmons: New NoteSpeak in Ya Ear

by Chris M. Slawecki
April 8, 2020

From their homebase in Lombardia, on the coast of Lake Garda in Italy, Lisa Marie Simmons and Marco Cremaschini share complementary creative skills as the lyrical and musical souls behind NoteSpeak: Poet, singer and songwriter Simmons crafts and delivers the lyrics while Cremaschini directs the sounds swirling around her as co-composer, pianist, and musical director. Their full-length debut NoteSpeak: Amori e Tragedie in Music (2020, Ropeadope) lands in your ear with a unique sound. NoteSpeak plays funk and ...