At the 29th Festival Densités, Maggie Nicols and Mark Wastell found some time for a conversation.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, vocalist and piannist Maggie Nicols (or Nichols as her name was written in former days) has worked on almost every kind of project.
At the age of 15, she left school and started to work as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre. Her first singing engagement was in a strip club in Manchester at the age of 16. About that time she became obsessed with Jazz and started singing with revolutionary bebop pianist Dennis Rose.
From then on she sang jazz standards and originals in pubs, clubs, hotels and in dance bands with some of the finest jazz musicians around.
In 1968, she joined John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble with Trevor Watts.
By the late ’70s, Maggie became an active feminist and co-founded the group OVA. Not long after, she started the Feminist Improvising Group, with Lindsay Cooper. She also organized Contradictions, a women’s workshop performance group that began in 1980 and dealt with improvisation and other modes of performance in a variety of mediums including music and dance.
Over the years, Maggie has collaborated with other women’s groups such as the Changing Women Theatre Group and even co-wrote music for a prime-time television series Women in Sport.
Mark Wastell plays cello, doubble bass, percusssion.
Playlist :
Maggie Nicols : Slow Within The Urgency (Are You Ready? - Otoroku - 2022)
Maggie Nicols / Mark Wastell : And John (And John - Confront - 2023)
Maggie Nicols, Lindsay Cooper, Joëlle Léandre : Heads Will Roll (Live At The Bastille - Sync Pulse Records - 1982)
Feminist Improvising Group : Stockholm - Continued (Feminist Improvising Group - Selfreleased - 1979)
Maggie Nicols : Look Beneath The Surface (Miniatures - Japan Record - 1982)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble & Orchestra : A Fragment Of 'Static' (Trio & Triangle - Emanem - 2008)
picture of Maggie Nicols @ Festival Densités #29 21-10-2023 © Jean-Claude Sarrasin