*the LP and 2CD contain different material.* First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow up to Creative Contradiction (Takuroku 2020).

While she might be best known as an improviser (most notably in Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of Les Diaboliques, Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown we invited her to follow up the wonderful solo ‘Creative Contradiction’ with some time spent singing alone at the piano. ‘Are You Ready?’ comprises an LP of songs and a 2CD edition which includes a companion disk of freely improvised meditations entitled, ‘Whatever Arises’.

Songs - seemingly contradictory to the practices of free improvisation - have been a vital part in Nicols’ relationship to music. It was singing bebop with pianist Dennis Rose which nurtured and challenged Nicols, allowing her to develop her own skills and sound amongst a repertoire of standards sung in clubs and pubs. Vocalising alongside Julie Tippetts in Centipede showed her how heady experimentation could be woven into composition, and more recently a gig with pianist Steve Lodder played out ‘The Maggie Nicols Songbook.’

'Are You Ready?' recalls Nicols’ own compositions from memory, working out tunes and turning them over. New routes down old paths form in moments of improvisation and all wrong turns are played out with joyous discovery. What John Stevens dubbed Maggie's “ability to find the ‘rhythmelodic’” meets a willingness to be understood and to understand. Solo at the piano, Nicols is still firmly rooted in the collective however - “Sans Papiers” sets the words of poet Vicky Scrivener to tune; a story of migration and struggle which is as important to Nicols as the songs her mother wrote.