Maggie Nicols (or Nichols, as she originally spelled her name as a performer) (born 24 February 1948),
is a Scottish
free-jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians durin ...
and
improvising
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
vocalist, dancer, and performer.
Early life and career
Nicols was born in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
, Scotland,
as Margaret Nicolson. Her father was from the
Isle of Skye
The Isle of Skye, or simply Skye (; gd, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach or ; sco, Isle o Skye), is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated ...
, and her mother was half-French, half-
Berber, from North Africa. In her mid-teens she left school and started to work as a dancer at the
Windmill Theatre
The Windmill Theatre in Great Windmill Street, London, was a variety and revue theatre best known for its nude ''tableaux vivants'', which began in 1932 and lasted until its reversion to a cinema in 1964. Many prominent British comedians of t ...
.
Her first singing engagement was in a
strip club
A strip club is a venue where strippers provide adult entertainment, predominantly in the form of striptease or other Erotic dancing, erotic or exotic dances. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or Bar (establishment), bar style, and can also ...
in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
in 1965. At about that time she became obsessed with
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, and sang with
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
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 (, ; ) is a cabaret in Paris, on Boulevard de Clichy, at Place Blanche, the intersection of, and terminus of Rue Blanche.
In 1889, the Moulin Rouge was co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who also owned the Olympia (P ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
).
In 1968, she went to
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and joined (as Maggie Nichols) an early improvisational group, the
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
Spontaneous may refer to:
* Spontaneous abortion
* Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis
* Spontaneous combustion
* Spontaneous declaration
* Spontaneous emission
* Spontaneous fission
* Spontaneous generation
* Spontaneous human combustion
* Sponta ...
, with
John Stevens,
Trevor Watts
Trevor Charles Watts (born 26 February 1939) is an English jazz and free-improvising alto and soprano saxophonist.
Biography
Watts was born in York, England. He is largely self-taught, having taken up the cornet at age 12 then switched to s ...
, and
Johnny Dyani
Johnny Mbizo Dyani (30 November 1945 – 24 October 1986) was a South African jazz double bassist, vocalist and pianist, who, in addition to being a key member of The Blue Notes, played with such international musicians as Don Cherry (jazz), Do ...
, and the group performed that year at
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
's then new
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
festival, Total Music Meeting. In the early 1970s she began running voice workshops at the
Oval House Theatre
Ovalhouse, formerly called Oval House Theatre, was an Off-West End theatre in the London Borough of Lambeth, located at 52–54 Kennington Oval, London, SE11 5SW. It closed in 2020, and moved to Brixton, becoming the Brixton House theatre (located ...
, using free improvisational techniques that Stevens had introduced her to. 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 Graham Tippetts (25 August 1947 – 14 June 2020), known professionally as Keith Tippett, was a British jazz pianist and composer. According to AllMusic, Tippett's career "..spanned jazz-rock, progressive rock, improvised and contemporary ...
's fifty-piece British jazz/progressive rock big band
Centipede
Centipedes (from New Latin , "hundred", and Latin , " foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', lip, and New Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, an ...
, which included
Julie Tippetts
Julie Driscoll Tippetts (born 8 June 1947) is an English singer and actress.
Career
Driscoll is known for her 1960s versions of Bob Dylan and Rick Danko's "This Wheel's on Fire", and Donovan's " Season of the Witch", both with Brian Auger and ...
,
Phil Minton
Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde 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 ...
,
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt (born Robert Wyatt-Ellidge, 28 January 1945) is a retired English musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming para ...
,
Dudu Pukwana
Mthutuzeli Dudu Pukwana (18 July 1938 – 30 June 1990) was a South African saxophonist, composer and pianist (although not known for his piano playing).
Early years in South Africa
Dudu Pukwana was born in Walmer Township, Port Elizabeth, S ...
, and
Alan Skidmore
Alan Richard James Skidmore (born 21 April 1942) is an English jazz tenor saxophonist, and the son of saxophonist Jimmy Skidmore.
Career
He was born in London, England. Skidmore began his professional career in his teens, and early in his care ...
. She formed her own group Okuren, and later joined Tippetts, Minton, and Brian Eley to form the vocal group Voice.
Around the same time she began collaborating with the Scottish percussionist
Ken Hyder
Ken Hyder (born 29 June 1946) is a Scottish jazz fusion drummer and percussionist born in Dundee, Scotland, perhaps best known for combining folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz.
Career
Hyder has worked with and recorded with many music ...
(who had recently moved to London) and his band Talisker.
In 1978 Nicols recorded an album with the vocalist Julie Tippetts called Sweet and S'Ours on the
FMP label.
By the late 1970s, Nicols had become an active
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
, and co-founded the
Feminist Improvising Group
The Feminist Improvising Group (FIG) were a five- to eight-piece international free improvising avant-garde jazz and experimental music ensemble formed in London in 1977 by Scottish vocalist Maggie Nicols and English bassoonist/composer Lindsay ...
, which performed across Europe, with
Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper (3 March 1951 – 18 September 2013) was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. 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 ...
. She also organised ''Contradictions'', a women's workshop performance group that began in 1980 and dealt with
improvisation
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
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 wrote music for a prime-time television series, ''Women in Sport''. She also composed the music for a production by Common Stock Youth Theatre of Brecht's ''
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' (german: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a b ...
''.
Later career
Nicols has also collaborated regularly over the years with Swiss pianist
Irene Schweizer
Irene is a name derived from εἰρήνη (eirēnē), the Greek for "peace".
Irene, and related names, may refer to:
* Irene (given name)
Places
* Irene, Gauteng, South Africa
* Irene, South Dakota, United States
* Irene, Texas, United Stat ...
and French bassist
Joelle Leandre Joelle is a feminine given name, and may refer to:
* Joelle, actor and singer
* Joelle Behlok, Lebanese television presenter and winner Miss Lebanon 1997
* Joelle Carter (born 1972), American actress
* Joelle Fishman (born 1946), American politicia ...
, including tours and three recordings as the trio "Les Diaboliques". In 1991 she began a weekly free improvisational meeting in London, which became known as The Gathering, a taste of which was captured on the album ''The Gathering: For John Stevens''.
In 2015, Maggie Nicols performed at the Long Arms Festival in Moscow and at the Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva Literary and Art Museum in the city of Alexandrov.
In 2020, she released her debut solo album entitled ''Creative Contradiction: Poetry, Story, Song & Sound'' on
Cafe Oto
Cafe Oto is a venue for free jazz, experimental and free improvisation performances located in the Dalston district of London, United Kingdom.
Founded in 2008 Cafe Oto (''sound'' or ''noise'' in Japanese) is located in the heart of Dalston and p ...
's Takuroku label.
Discography
* ''Sweet and S'ours'' with Julie Tippetts (FMP, 1982)
* ''Live at the Bastille'' with Joelle Leandre, Lindsay Cooper (Sync Pulse, 1982)
* ''Nicols 'n' Nu'' with Peter Nu (Leo, 1985)
* ''Don't Assume'' with Peter Nu (Leo, 1987)
*''
Live at Taktlos
''Live at Taktlos'' is a live album by pianist Irène Schweizer. It was recorded in February 1984 during a three-day improvisation meeting, and was released by Intakt Records on LP in 1986, and on CD in 2005. On the album, Schweizer is joined by vo ...
'' with Irene Schweizer (Intakt, 1986)
* ''
The Storming of the Winter Palace
''The Storming of the Winter Palace'' was a 1920 mass spectacle, based on historical events that took place in Petrograd during the 1917 October Revolution.
Taking place on the third anniversary of the revolution, it was directed by Nikolai Evre ...
'' with Irene Schweizer (Intakt, 1988)
* ''Transitions'' with Caroline Kraabel, Charlotte Hug (Emanem, 2002)
* ''Human'' with Phil Hargreaves (Whi Music, 2012)
* ''Other Worlds'' with Peter Urpeth (FMR, 2017)
* ''Energy Being'' with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (FMR, 2019)
*''Creative Contradiction: Poetry, Story, Song & Sound'' (Takuroku, 2020)
References
Sources
*.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicols, Maggie
1948 births
Living people
British women jazz singers
Free improvisation
Avant-garde jazz musicians
Feminist musicians
20th-century Scottish women singers
Scottish jazz singers
Emanem Records artists
Scottish female dancers
Musicians from Edinburgh
Centipede (band) members
Spontaneous Music Ensemble members
The Dedication Orchestra members
Leo Records artists
Intakt Records artists
21st-century Scottish women singers