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Maggie Nicols

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Maggie Nicols is a Scottish singer, dancer and performer in free jazz and improvisation. She was born in Edinburgh in 1948 as Margaret Nicolson. As a teenager she worked as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre, in 1965 she sang for the first time in a club in Manchester and became obsessed with jazz. She sang with the bebop pianist Dennis Rose and in dance bands, and worked for a year as a dancer abroad, including at the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

Music and breakthrough

In 1968 she went to London and joined John Stevens's Spontaneous Music Ensemble. In the early 1970s she gave voice workshops at the Oval House Theatre and played in Centipede, Keith Tippett's fifty-piece big band. With Julie Tippetts, Phil Minton and Brian Eley she formed the vocal quartet Voice. In 1978 she recorded the album Sweet and S'Ours with Julie Tippetts for the label FMP. She became an active feminist and founded the Feminist Improvising Group with Lindsay Cooper. Later she worked with Irene Schweizer and Joëlle Léandre as the trio Les Diaboliques. In 1991 she started a weekly improvisation gathering in London, The Gathering.

Influence

She uses her voice as an instrument, with sounds, words and rhythms that arise on the spot. In this way she became an important example for British free improvisation.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a recording by Maggie Nicols, for example Sweet and S'Ours with Julie Tippetts, and notice how she builds sounds and words without a fixed melody using her voice. Try to hear where she responds to her fellow musician.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Categories: Artists