Maggie Nicols
Encyclopedia
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
free-jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
and improvising
Musical improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
vocalist, dancer, and performer.
Early life and career
Nicols was born in EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
as Margaret Nicholson. Her father was from the Isle of Lewis, and her mother was a pure-blooded Berber
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
from North Africa. At the age of fifteen she left school and started to work as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre
Windmill Theatre
The Windmill Theatre, later The Windmill International, was a variety and revue theatre in Great Windmill Street, London. The theatre was famous for its nude tableaux vivants...
. Her first singing engagement was in a strip club
Strip club
A strip club is an adult entertainment venue in which striptease or other erotic or exotic dance is regularly performed. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or bar style, but can also adopt a theatre or cabaret-style....
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
at the age of sixteen. At about that time she became obsessed with jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, and sang with bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
pianist Dennis Rose. From then on she sang in pubs, clubs, hotels, and in dance bands with some of the finest jazz musicians around. In the midst of all this she worked abroad for a year as a dancer (including a six-month stint at the Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge is a cabaret built in 1889 by Joseph Oller, who also owned the Paris Olympia. Close to Montmartre in the Paris district of Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th arrondissement, it is marked by the red windmill on its roof. The closest métro station is Blanche.The Moulin Rouge is...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
).
In 1968, she went to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and joined (as Maggie Nichols) an early improvisational group, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble was a loose collection of free improvising musicians convened beginning in the mid-1960s by the late South London-based jazz drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts...
, with John Stevens
John Stevens (drummer)
John William Stevens was an English drummer. He was one of the most significant figures in early free improvisation, and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble .-Biography:Stevens was born in Brentford, the son of a tap dancer...
, Trevor Watts
Trevor Watts
Trevor Charles Watts is an English jazz and free-improvising alto and soprano saxophonist. He is largely self-taught, having taken up the cornet at age 12 then switched to saxophone at 18. While stationed in Germany with the RAF , he encountered the drummer John Stevens and trombonist Paul...
, and Johnny Dyani
Johnny Dyani
Johnny Mbizo Dyani was a South African jazz double bassist and pianist, who played with such musicians as Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, David Murray and Leo Smith....
, and the group performed that year at Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
's then new avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
festival, Total Music Meeting. In the early 1970s she began running voice workshops at the Oval House Theatre
Oval House Theatre
Ovalhouse formerly called Oval House Theatre is an Off-Westend theatre led by joint Directors of Theatre Rebecca Atkinson-Lord and Rachel Briscoe in the London Borough of Lambeth...
(one of the most important centres for pioneer fringe theatre
Fringe theatre
Fringe theatre is theatre that is not of the mainstream. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which name comes from Robert Kemp, who described the unofficial companies performing at the same time as the second Edinburgh International Festival as a ‘fringe’, writing: ‘Round the fringe...
groups). She both acted in some of the productions and rehearsed regularly with a local rock band. Shortly afterwards she became part of Keith Tippett
Keith Tippett
Keith Tippett is a British jazz pianist and composer.Tippett, the son of a local police officer, went to Greenway Boys Secondary Modern school in Southmead, Bristol. He formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school and they performed numbers popular at the time by The Temperance...
's fifty-piece British jazz/progressive rock big band Centipede
Centipede (band)
Centipede were an English jazz/progressive rock/Canterbury sound big band with more than 50 members, organized and led by the British free jazz pianist Keith Tippett...
, which included Julie Tippetts, Phil Minton
Phil Minton
Phil Minton is a jazz/free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter.Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce's...
, Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
, Dudu Pukwana
Dudu Pukwana
Mtutuzel Dudu Pukwana was a South African saxophonist, composer and pianist .-Early years in South Africa:...
, and Alan Skidmore
Alan Skidmore
Alan Skidmore is a tenor saxophonist of jazz and blues music, son of the saxophonist Jimmy Skidmore.-As a sideman:...
. Tippetts, Minton, and Nicols also joined Brian Eley to form the vocal group Voice. Around this time, Nicols began collaborating with the Scottish percussionist Ken Hyder
Ken Hyder
Ken Hyder is a Scottish jazz fusion drummer and percussionist born in Dundee, Scotland, perhaps best-known for combining folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz...
(who had recently moved to London) and his band Talisker.
By the late 1970s, Nicols had become an active feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group
Feminist Improvising Group
The Feminist Improvising Group were a five- to eight-piece English free improvising avant-garde jazz and avant-rock ensemble formed in London in 1977...
, which performed across Europe, with Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper is an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians...
. She also organised Contradictions, a women's workshop performance group that began in 1980 and dealt with improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
and other modes of performance in a variety of media including music and dance. Over the years, Nicols has collaborated with other women's groups, such as the Changing Women Theatre Group, and even wrote music for a prime-time television series, Women in Sport.
Today
Nicols has also collaborated regularly over the years with Swiss pianist Irene SchweizerIrène Schweizer
Irène Schweizer is a notable Swiss jazz and free improvising pianist. She was born in Schaffhausen, in 1941.She has performed and recorded numerous solo piano performances as well as performing as part of the Feminist Improvising Group, whose members include Lindsay Cooper, Maggie Nichols, Georgie...
and French bassist Joelle Leandre
Joëlle Léandre
Joëlle Léandre is a double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation....
, including tours and three recordings as the trio Les Diaboliques. Her collaboration with Ken Hyder also continues; the duo incorporate elements of the traditional tunes of their shared Scottish background into jazz improvisations in their most recent project, Hoots and Roots Duo. Other continuing projects for Nicols include a duo with pianist Pete Nu, a singing duo with her daughter Aura Marina, a trio with avant-gardists Caroline Kraabel
Caroline Kraabel
Caroline Kraabel is a London-based American composer, improviser and saxophonist. She is known for her research into the implications of electricity related to recording, synthesis and amplification....
and Charlotte Hug, a duo with pianist Steve Lodder
Steve Lodder
Steve Lodder, born Stephen John Lodder, , is a British keyboardist, composer, and organist. He played piano as a child and took up organ at age 14...
("The Maggie Nicols Songbook"), and Light and Shade, a project with lighting designer Sue Neal. She has also been involved with many other groups, such as the a capella group Inspiration (former Brixton Youth), Trevor Watts
Trevor Watts
Trevor Charles Watts is an English jazz and free-improvising alto and soprano saxophonist. He is largely self-taught, having taken up the cornet at age 12 then switched to saxophone at 18. While stationed in Germany with the RAF , he encountered the drummer John Stevens and trombonist Paul...
' Moire Music, Very Varied, The Lewis Riley Quartet, No Rules OK, Pulse, Gustt, and Al Dente.
Nicols has performed internationally for several decades, including the Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
and the Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
"Canaille" festivals, the Victoriaville Festival
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville
The Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville is an annual international music festival held in Victoriaville, Quebec that showcases contemporary music.-External links:*...
. She also gave solo performances at the Moers Music Festival, the Cologne Triennale
Triennale
La Triennale di Milano is a design museum and events venue in Milan, Italy, located inside the Palace of Art building, part of Parco Sempione, the park grounds adjacent to Castello Sforzesco. It hosts exhibitions and events which highlight contemporary Italian design, urban planning, architecture,...
, and a number of other creative and improvised music festivals. She has worked with a great many improvisers from all over the world, including drummer Günter "Baby" Sommer
Günter Sommer
Günter Baby Sommer is a German jazz drummer.He studied music in Dresden. He rose to fame in the GDR. He is part of the European free jazz avantgarde. He was part of the trio with Conny Bauer and Peter Kowald...
, British soprano saxophonist Lol Coxhill
Lol Coxhill
Lowen Coxhill, generally known as Lol Coxhill is a free improvising saxophonist and raconteur...
, Dutch trombonist and violinist Annemarie Roelofs
Annemarie Roelofs
Annemarie Roelofs , also spelt Anne-Marie Roelofs and Anne Marie Roelofs, is a Dutch trombone player and violinist, and is a professor at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. She is a member of several musical groups and has performed in Holland and England.-Biography:Roelofs...
, the Australian Relative Band (with Jim Denley), tuba player Pinguin Moschner, the Loverly Band, Cats Cradle, and Sean Bergin
Sean Bergin
Sean Bergin is an avant-garde jazz saxophonist and flautist originally from South AfricaBergin was born in Durban on June 29, 1948. He is saxophonist, flautist, composer, educator and bandleader....
's Song Mob (with Han Bennink
Han Bennink
Han Bennink is a Dutch jazz drummer and percussionist. On occasion his recordings have featured his playing on clarinet, violin, banjo and piano....
and Tristan Honsinger
Tristan Honsinger
Tristan Honsinger is a cello player active in free jazz and free improvisation. He is perhaps best known for his long-running collaboration with free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and guitarist Derek Bailey....
).