Nicols was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland, Her first singing engagement was in a
strip club in
Manchester in 1965. At about that time she became obsessed with
jazz, and sang with
bebop 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 in
Paris). In 1968, she went to
London and joined (as
Maggie Nichols) an early improvisational group, the
Spontaneous Music Ensemble, with
John Stevens,
Trevor Watts, and
Johnny Dyani, and the group performed that year at
Berlin's then new
avant-garde festival, Total Music Meeting. In the early 1970s she began running voice workshops at the
Oval House Theatre, 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's fifty-piece British jazz/progressive rock big band
Centipede, which included
Julie Tippetts,
Phil Minton,
Robert Wyatt,
Dudu Pukwana, and
Alan Skidmore. She formed her own group Okuren, and later joined Tippetts, Minton, and Brian Eley to form the vocal group Voice. By the late 1970s, Nicols had become an active
feminist, and co-founded the
Feminist Improvising Group, which performed across Europe, with
Lindsay Cooper. She also organised
Contradictions, a women's workshop performance group that began in 1980 and dealt with
improvisation 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. ==Later career==