Asher Quinn

Asha (aka Asha Elijah, Asha Quinn, Asher Quinn & Denis Quinn), is an English singer-songwriter and composer of an individual genre, the spiritually-themed love-song. As a musician he was first known as Denis Quinn on the New World Music label. He was born in Dulwich, South London, England.

Asha
Birth name	Denis Lloyd Bruce Trainin
Origin	London, England
Genres	Spiritual love-songs
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, spiritual psychotherapist
Instruments	Piano, vocals, keyboards, guitars, mouth organ, percussion
Years active	1987–present
Labels	Singing Stone Music, New World Music
Website	Asha

Proceeding primarily as an instrumentalist initially, his first album of songs Open Secret was not released until he was 34. After several more early instrumental works, including improvised solo piano vignettes, he has turned increasingly to music as a vehicle of expression for spiritual devotion, through self-penned love ballads and anthems.

Inspired in part by the Sufi poets Rumi & Hafiz, his songs speaks of love, lover and beloved as one, though often presented lyrically as romantic odes. His compositions can double as both conventional love-songs, but also higher hymns and songs of praise to God.

Asha's path is as a Christian mystic, though he was born to a Jewish mother, and initiated aged 35 into mystical Islam, through a Sufi master, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. His faith is in Christ as an inner, living being of love, uniting humanity in one over-arching virtue, love itself. He takes as his doctrine Christ's last commandment to the disciples: Love one another.

He regards music as the art with the greatest capacity for transmitting higher love, Agape in the ancient Greek tradition. He seeks to express his devotion through song, but also as a means to actually transmit a message of higher love. When asked what kind of musician he felt he was, and what genre he felt he belonged to, he described himself as more of a postman than a musician.

Garnering lyrical inspiration also from the music of the two "great Jewish prophets of song in our time", Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen, Asha also locates himself musically as a minstrel in the tradition of the folk-song, lament, anthem & lullaby. His musical synthesis owes more to the lineage of the troubador on the Grail quest than to the contemporary scene.

Musical career

Asha's debut album in 1987 for New World Music,[1] Open Secret, was instrumental, a mix of neo-classical compositions and ambient pieces. This album was produced by Anthony Phillips,[2] co-founder of Genesis. The album topped the new age and ambient charts around the world, and the track "Soldier of love" was used as an anthem by various spiritual organisations. Andy Latimer of Camel played lead guitar on "Soldier of love", and Phillips played classical guitar. Cellist Jemma Siddel, drummer Tristan Maillot, flautist Cynthia Robertson, oboist Anthony Freer (of The Enid) and violinist Ivor McGregor also played. Asha had seen the title Open Secret as a section in a collection of Sufi poems, and felt that it could equally apply to his first collection of songs. The "open secret" in question being the knowledge that God is in all things.

In 1988, Asha recorded a collection of lightly orchestrated piano pieces on an album called Single as Love, and followed that with Mystic Heart in 1989, produced by Anthony Phillips. Unusually for the new age genre, and against the company policy, Mystic Heart featured vocals, and yet also topped the new age and ambient charts. The "Missa Greca" (Greek Mass) is another track widely used as an anthem by spiritual organisations, from this album. Sharon Sage sang female vocals, and Greek-born Sufi scholar Aziz Dikeulias sang the doxastikon on this track.

Asha's early work for New World Music came after 6 years of trying and failing to secure a record or publishing deal. The general critique had been that whilst the companies appreciated the musicianship, they didn't feel there was a market for either his esoteric lyrics, or a genre within which to place all his different styles of music.

Deciding then to borrow money to simply record a cassette in the studio to give to friends and passers-by, in 1985 he came across a shop in London's Soho, called The Dawn Horse Bookshop. There he heard new age music for the first time, "ambient, heart-centered music" that struck a chord, so he bought a cassette and wrote to the company sending his own demo-cassette. By return of post he secured a deal with New World Music, then simply New World Cassettes, and that album became Open Secret which established him as one of the front-runners of the New Age Music genre, and a pioneer in adding spiritualised lyrics, chants and mantras.

These early albums were greatly inspired by the Sufi spiritual tradition, and one track in particular on Mystic Heart called 'Allah, Hallelujah' Elohim' brought together 3 strands of his inner life, Judaism, Sufism and Christianity. Asha had been born Jewish, had had visions of the Christ as a child and had had the spiritual gates of perception opened for him by Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. He saw Judaism, Christianity and Islam as brothers.

Through his Sufi teacher he had also been exposed to the Greek Orthodox Slavonic liturgies of Bulgarian male voice choirs in the late 1980's, and spent the summer of 1988 near Thessalonika in northern Greece, completing Mystic Heart. Sharon Sage who sang on the track "The Missa Greca", was the daughter of Asha's university lecturer Lorna, and her literature lecturer father, Vic Sage, who had a post in Thessalonika's university during that time.

Further albums for New World Music followed, though Asha never felt entirely comfortable with the "new-age" tag. Inspired by dynamic, inventive new-age artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Terry Oldfield (who's brother Mike also didn't fit the new-age tag, though Asha resonated with his eclectic approach), and Brian Eno, Asha also felt "vaguely embarrassed" as he put it, by the more predictable end of the spectrum; "shopping-mall muzak" he described it as.

By 1988, Denis Quinn had legally changed his name to Asha, following a dream. In 1990, he made Wings of Fire, engineered by New World Music colleague Phil Thornton, before recording for the last time with Anthony Phillips on Amadora, in 1991. Both these albums again mixed instrumental passages with vocals, chants and mantras, as well as intimate love-songs. Amadora featured euphonic vocals.

Between 1992–1995, Asha recorded Fiery Moon, Field of Stars, and Marriage of the Sun and Moon with Thornton, all vocal and instrumental new age albums for New World Music, as well as the purely instrumental A Concert of Angels, Art of Love and a re-worked Single as Love. The instrumental A Concert of Angels is still his best-selling title. Thornton played lead guitar and recorder on several tracks. Intriguingly, A Concert of Angels was entirely improvised and took less than 3 days to complete, costing next to nothing to make.

Three more vocal and instrumental albums followed between 1996–1999, engineered by contemporary new age artist James Asher. These were Resurrection, Love is the Only Prayer and Music for Love. "Return to your soul" from Music for Love was another track adopted by several spiritual organisations as an anthem. Tenor Philip Ball and classically trained singer Susanne Bramson known simply as 'Susanna' appeared on Love is the Only Prayer and Music for Love.

Asha's first independent public concert as an invitation was given in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1998, for the Theosophical Foundation there led by Tara Ananda Shah. His first appearance in public, however, as what he termed "a credible artist", had been back on October 18, 1979, at a cafe in Boulder, Colorado. Over the next 12 months he sang on the streets as a busker all over the USA & Mexico, and at many cafes and small venues.

Denied a busker's licence at Fisherman's wharf, San Francisco, because his songs were "too spiritual", he was befriended by fellow artists and lived aboard an Alaskan fishing trawler called The Red Baron for some months. He was taught to play the rhythm and lead electric guitar by 'Wolf' who had himself, allegedly, been taught to play the guitar by Charles Manson.

A group of Red Baron friends and artists then formed a band called The Wharf Rats and sang in front of 1,000 people on New Year's Eve 1979 at the Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco, known as a punk venue and strip club. Asha sang some his own compositions in a band for the one and only time.

Moving forward in time again, and with his children very little, Asha did not compose or record between 1999-2005. Various Asha compilations were released by New World Music during this time, including Celestine, Prophecy and Silent Night.

Returning to composing and recording, East of East was released first on the Goodheart Music label, in 2005, after a separation with New World Music as a contracted artist, and later re-released by Dutch musician Roland van Steijn's Wolfeye Music in 2007. This was a singer-songwriter album, engineered by Med Goodall, Phil Thornton and Roland van Steijn. Asha then recorded two more albums with Phil Thornton, High Planes Music in 2007, and the double album Songs of Love and Chains in 2008, whilst also releasing several compilation back catalogue titles with Wolfeye Music, as well as Serpent in Paradise in 2008, engineered by Roland van Steijn, who played lead guitar.

On High Planes Music Asha is accompanied by a Hungarian female singer using her spiritual name, Lila Mayi, who now has a cabaret career as Laura Riz. A decade later and Asha collaborates with Laura's son, pianist Oliver Riz for the track 'Take this love' on the album Knights & Angels.

French author Michel Houellebecq adaptation of his novel to film The Possibility of an Island[3] in 2008, used two Asha pieces on the soundtrack, Amadora and In love.

In 2009, Rob Ayling's Voiceprint Records re-released Open Secret with bonus vocal tracks, and also Serpent in Paradise, plus a double CD of 'greatest hits' called Forgotten Language of the Heart, after which Asha founded his own label, Singing Stone Music.

At this point Asha entered more into the digital age. He had an inter-active website designed for him with a shop, first by a friend of mentor Anthony Phillips, Jonathan Dann, and then a more spiritualised site by a friend in Hungary, Emõke Labancz. He also began to make videos for the songs, and reply to well-wishers by email, instead of snail-mail!

Asha's career formally entered a different phase from 2010, as an independent artist, both commercially, but also content-wise, with Asha focusing more and more on the intimate spiritual love-ballad as a means of self-expression, with the songs becoming increasingly guided from above, as he describes.Falling Through Time (2010), O Great Spirit (2011) and Sacred Songs (2012) were three albums engineered by Shaun Britton, with vocals added by the actress Jimena Larraguivel and Jaba on Falling Through Time, and lead guitar by Kristian Biddiss.

In 2013 Asha released State of Grace,[4] engineered by Dutchman Arno op Den Camp. State of Grace features collaborations with Myristica, and additional vocals by Kerani and Emöke Labancz.

2014 saw several outputs: Heal Your Heart (containing new versions of some older songs); Sun, Sorrow, Flowers, Moon (a third volume of cover versions following on from the double album Songs of Love and Chains, and Heart & Soul Rhapsodies, a new collection of improvised piano vignettes all engineered by Arno op Den Camp in the Netherlands.

In 2015 came The Blessing & the Bliss, followed by Thunderheart in 2016, both engineered by Tim Rock in Norfolk, England. 2016 saw Asha move to spend more time in Budapest, Hungary, to follow an esoteric Christian mystic path at a latter-day Mystery School there. Heart & Soul Rhapsodies, The Blessing & the Bliss and Thunderheart began to reflect his immersion into Hungary's particular spiritual traditions, and the theme of the twin-flame, the eternal pilgrim and the mystical reality of the Christ phenomenon for humanity, increasingly found expression in his songs.

Developing these themes further, in 2017 he released both Calvary Hill, begun with Tim Rock engineering and completed with Cserny Kálmán at Origo Studio, in Budapest, and Knights & Angels made at Origo Studio. Géza Kremnitzky of the Hungarian folk due Hungarikum Együttes played guitar, mandolin, recorder and mouth-organ on both albums, and Székely Ilus (Yloush) sang on Knights & Angels. The final track 'Take this love' on Knights & Angels was that one co-written with Hungarian pianist Oliver Riz.

2018 saw the release of Grail Songs made at Origo Studio with Yloush adding female vocals, and in 2019 Sirius made at Origo, now with actress Katinka Egres adding female vocals. The artwork for Grail Songs and a video for the track 'Song of peace' was a collaboration with Hungarian Christian artist András Simon. The piece itself is Asha's arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon, with both an added Hallelujah chorus of Asha's and a Latin prayer of peace arranged by Yloush.

Katinka Egres is quite well-known in Hungary having appeared on TV & in several films, where she's appeared alongside both Brad Pitt and Kiera Knightly. The role for which she's best known is as the gypsy girl Böske, in Megy a gõzös, from 2007 ("The train keeps a-rollin").

2020 saw the release of two further albums made at Origo, God Gave Us Flowers in April, a 4th volume of cover versions of songs by such diverse artists as Bob Dylan & Buddy Holly, as well as both Scottish and Hungarian folk-songs, where Asha sings in Hungarian, and Songs For a More Meaningful Life in October, with Katinka Egres providing female vocals.

Since 2004, Asha has performed in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Iceland, Denmark, Hungary, Germany and Finland.

Back in 1985, as Denis Quinn, he was a finalist at two different Irish Song Festivals, the Tipperary Song of Peace Festival and the Cavan International Song Contest. At the latter one of the judges was Bob Geldoff's sister, Lyn, and it was hosted by TV celebrity Gay Byrne.

Musical inspiration

Asha has been musically inspired by such diverse artists, styles and genres as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Baroque music, Vaughan Williams, Dvorak, indigenous folk traditions, Ludovico Einaudi, Yann Tiersen, Mike Oldfield, and the ballads of Bruce Springsteen amongst many others.

Spiritually he has found inspiration in the Gospel of John, the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz, and the lives of the saints such as Therese of Lisieux and Francis of Assisi, as well as the Christian mysticism of Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz, and the psychology and mythology of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. He was initiated into the Sufi order of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan in 1988,[5] the same year that he legally changed his name from Denis to Asha.

Personal details

Asha was born to Maria Priscilla Trainin, the daughter of a Russian immigrant, Boris. Boris's Jewish family had fled persecution from Orsha, in what is now Belarus in the Pale settlement. Originally they were from further east in the southern Urals.

Asha's father was an internationally-known big-band singer in London, Dennis Hale, and Asha was born out of wedlock. His mother Maria attended England's first Rudolf Steiner Waldorf school, in Forest Row, Sussex. Asha was named Denis Lloyd Bruce Trainin on his birth certificate. Maria chose to name him Denis with one 'n'as opposed to his father's two. Denis itself, the French form of the name, derives from Dionysus, the Greek God of the vine.

Aged two-and-a-half he was adopted by a Jewish family, and was given the name Denis Anthony Reuben Marks. Living first in Wembley near the famous football stadium, he attended St. Christopher's primary school there, and the family then settled in Ealing, west London.

He began to play the piano intuitively, by ear, aged 3, and had a vision of the Christ aged 5. In the vision, he describes how Christ "came through the wall" with thousands of children dressed in white, marching into Jerusalem. This had a profound effect on the young Asha, and laid out his life path before him. He remarks that as an individual, a musician and as a therapist, he has been on that path ever since; an eternal pilgrim. As one devoted to Christ, the task of the eternal pilgrim is to "help Christ carry his cross".

He found himself unable to learn musical theory, however, and is still not able to read or write music, preferring his own inner language of music.

As Denis Marks, Asha attended Latymer Upper school in Hammersmith London, a school with theatrical traditions, and was contemporary with, but not in the same year as, actors Alan Rickman, and Hugh Grant. TV comedian Mel smith was in the same year and Asha had comedic roles in his revues.

Asha gained a bachelor's degree in English and American literature from the University of East Anglia in 1977, where he was taught by novelist and literary critic Lorna Sage, and was in a creative writing course that soon included novelist Ian McEwan.

In 1979, Asha (still Denis then) legally changed his surname to 'Quinn' after a "transpersonal moment" and a prompting from within. Quinn is a Celtic name meaning 'he who constantly soars above'.

In 1988 he legally changed his first name to 'Asha' following a dream. In the dream he describes how a Zoroastrian sun-angel bestowed the name upon him. The name 'Asha' has many meanings, amongst them 'best truth' or 'Christ truth'.

Asha married Karen (Kitty) Price in 1997, and they have two sons, Theodore Severin Quinn born on June 2, 1994, and Isaac Cornelius Taliesin Quinn, born on February 26, 1998.

The infant Denis Trainin became the child Denis Marks, later the adult Denis Quinn and then the spiritual adult Asha. Needing a surname on a passport, he is listed officially there as Asha Quinn. In his music genre this sometimes became 'Asher Quinn', with 'Asher' being more commonly referenced as a male name.

In 2017 he took the name Asha Elijah after a further transpersonal moment and inner prompting. Asha describes how this moment differed from the others, though, as he was given to understand that 'Elijah' was not his identity, but simply a grace name that he could step into when manifesting songs from the spiritual world.

Spiritual psychotherapy

Asha has been a qualified spiritual psychotherapist since 1989, training in The Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology at the Centre For Counselling & Psychotherapy Education in London from 1987-1990, and completing a further 2-year specialist training in transpersonal psychology at the Centre for Transpersonal Psychotherapy in 1992. This first training was strongly rooted in both the Sufi mystical tradition, and also Theosophy, as well as including the latter-day psychological approaches of Berne's Transactional Analysis; Bowlby's Attachment Theory; and the work of Freud, Jung, Klein, Winnicott, Frankl, Kubler-Ross, Grof & Perls. Asha was in analysis for 28 years with Pedro Kujawski, who himself had trained with Marie-Louise von Franz, a colleague of Jung's, in Zurich.

Psychotherapy, evolving from the Greek Mystery Schools where the word means 'to attend the soul', has in essence a definite root in more ancient shamanic healing traditions, and to this end Asha completed shamanic training modules with the Sacred Trust Organisation in the UK, and attended courses by African shaman, author and scholar Malidoma Somé, and Swiss/Guatemalan shaman and author Martín Prechtel.

Asha describes a link between true therapy and artistic creativity. The space between the therapist and the individual seeking therapy is called in Greek The Temenos or sacred space. Into this space comes a higher force of healing. It is, in effect, a consecrated space. The therapist's task is to bring the individual into that consecrated space so that they receive the higher love into their own souls. The therapist is nominally the host or guide. Similarly with sacred song, the artist enters into a bond with a higher force of healing in order to receive the healing message, in musical form.

Asha has this quote on his music website from The Gayan of Hazrat Inayat Khan:

'What science cannot declare, art can suggest. What art suggests silently, poetry speaks out. But what poetry fails to explain in words, is expressed by music.'

Asha describes how it is the same place that he goes to in his soul for song, as on behalf of an individual who comes for therapy; an intuitive, guided place. His task as a therapist is to introduce the individual to that same place in their soul, and God takes it from there.

Asha now lives predominantly in Budapest, Hungary, where he is involved with a latter-day Mystery School in the Christian Mystic tradition, and is studying Hungary's tradition of pre-Christian Christianity, preserved by the Pálos monks, and the Hungarian shamen called Táltos. The táltos tradition differs from other shamanic traditions in that no ritual is involved; the táltos receives the healing word directly from God.

Whilst Asha also has a base in London, he is an international therapist and spiritual mentor through the medium of Skype.

Discography

Studio albums

• 1987 - Open Secret
• 1988 - Single as Love
• 1989 - Mystic Heart
• 1990 - Wings of Fire
• 1991 - Amadora
• 1992 - Fiery Moon
• 1993 - Concert of Angels
• 1993 - Art of Love
• 1993 - Single as Love (re-worked)
• 1994 - Field of Stars
• 1995 - Marriage of the Sun and Moon
• 1996 - Resurrection
• 1997 - Love is the Only Prayer
• 1999 - Music for Love
• 2005 - East of East
• 2007 - High Planes Music
• 2008 - Serpent in Paradise
• 2008 - Songs of Love and Chains
• 2009 - 'Live' at Violet Hill
• 2010 - Falling Through Time
• 2011 - O Great Spirit
• 2012 - Sacred Songs
• 2013 - State of Grace
• 2014 - Heal Your Heart
• 2014 - Sun, Sorrow, Flowers, Moon
• 2014 - Heart and Soul Rhapsodies
• 2015 - The Blessing & the Bliss
• 2016 - Thunderheart
• 2017 - Calvary Hill
• 2017 - Knights & Angels
• 2018 - Grail Songs
• 2019 - Sirius
• 2020 - God Gave us Flowers
• 2020 - Songs For a More Meaningful Life

Compilations

• 1996 - Celestine
• 1996 - Prophecy
• 2004 - Silent Night
• 2005 - This Love
• 2005 - Stardance
• 2005 - Sketches of Innocence
• 2009 - Forgotten Language of the Heart
• 2010 - Songs of Asher Quinn

References

1. "Asher Quinn (Asha) | New World Music". 19 June 2013. Archived from the original on 19 June 2013. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
2. "Asher Quinn German interview". Ashaquinn.com. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
3. "Possibility of an Island". IMDb.com. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
4. "Peaceful Radio News". Peacefulradio.info. Retrieved 20 May 2020.

External links

• Asha official site
• Discography
• Music Videos on YouTube