We are proud to present the Scottish avant-garde pioneer Maggie Nicols for a rare solo performance at ALICE this April. With voice and piano – and with room for improvisation, tap dance, and unpredictable moments – Nicols invites us into her singular, deeply expressive universe. For fans of icons such as Spacy Lady and Meredith Monk, this comes highly recommended. Saltmother opens the evening with eclectic musical approaches and vocal experiments.

Born in Edinburgh in 1948, Maggie Nicols has been a central figure on the European improvisation scene for decades. She left school at 15 and began her career as a dancer before moving into jazz, joining London’s legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in 1968. Since then, she has left an indelible mark on fully free, non-idiomatic improvisation with her playful, political, and profoundly personal approach to music. In the 1970s, Nicols founded both the vocal group Voice and the feminist performance collective Feminist Improvising Group, insisting throughout her career on music as a space of freedom – both as artistic practice and activist action. Her concerts balance the vulnerable and the powerful, the humorous and the deeply moving. Always with the body and the voice as her primary instruments.

When Maggie Nicols performs at ALICE, the evening’s repertoire will primarily draw from her two critically acclaimed solo albums released on Café OTO’s OTOROKU label, where the song format unfolds in all its elastic and experimental beauty. Here we encounter Nicols in concentrated form: spontaneous, physical, poetic, and fully present. For fans of Spacy Lady and Meredith Monk, this is a rare opportunity to experience a true legend in an intimate solo setting.

Saltmother
Saltmother opens the evening for Maggie Nicols. A Saltmother concert is an intense, sensitive, grand, quiet, noisy, and delightful experience, drawing on eclectic musical and vocal approaches from medieval ballads, grunge rock, and synth pop. Expect everything from murder ballads told from the perspective of the Virgin Mary to songs about being slightly too old to pee in the street while drunk. On stage, Saltmother shifts between acoustic and synthetic expressions, built around either piano or synthesizer. Behind Saltmother is composer and singer Amanda Appel, who has been active on the Danish experimental scene since 2020 as part of the vocal group ilinx. In 2022, she released her solo EP “Heavy In Baby Blue” and is currently working on her debut album, expected in 2026.