Asher Quinn

Asha (also known as Asha Elijah, Asha Quinn, Asher Quinn or 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.
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 and 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.
Quinn'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 and Leonard Cohen, Quinn also locates himself musically as a minstrel in the tradition of the folk-song, lament, anthem, and lullaby. His musical synthesis owes more to the lineage of the troubador on the Grail quest than to the contemporary scene.
Musical career
Quinn's debut album in 1987 for New World Music, Open Secret, was instrumental, a mix of neo-classical compositions and ambient pieces. This album was produced by Anthony Phillips, 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. Quinn 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, Quinn 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.
Quinn'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. Quinn 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 sang on the track "The Missa Greca".
Further albums for New World Music followed, though Quinn never felt entirely comfortable with the "new-age" tag. Inspired by dynamic, inventive new-age artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Terry Oldfield (whose brother Mike Oldfield also did not fit the new-age tag, though Quinn resonated with his eclectic approach), and Brian Eno, Quinn also felt "vaguely embarrassed" as he put it, by the more predictable end of the spectrum.
By 1988, 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, Quinn 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.
Quinn'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, 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 said he 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. Quinn 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, Quinn did not compose or record between 1999-2005. Various 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. Quinn 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, Quinn 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 Quinn 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 in 2008, used two Quinn 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 Quinn founded his own label, Singing Stone Music.
At this point Quinn 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.
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.
Quinn 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 Quinn had comedic roles in his revues.
Quinn earned 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.
In 1979, he 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'.
Quinn 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.
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
Quinn 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.
Quinn 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.

Quinn 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.
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

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