James Asher
Artist Bio:
James Asher has had a long and varied career in the music business--his first single was produced by Pete Townsend in 1979, and he went on to return the favor by playing drums on Pete's Empty Glass album. After writing and recording 23 albums of library music, as well as gaining a clutch of production credits, he has gone on to explore the wider horizons of world music, releasing a series of very well received albums. In 1990, his first commercial album release, The Great Wheel, reached number 13 in the Billboard New Age chart, staying there on and off for about two years. His second album, Globalarium, featured world artists such as Hossam Ramzy on Egyptian percussion and Joji Hirota on shakuhachi. The most recent, Feet in the Soil, is "an uplifting celebration of danceable energies centered in the earth," drawing inspiration from Aboriginal and African lifestyles, and has sold over 100,000 copies since its release last year. Although James started his professional career as a drummer, he now considers keyboards his main instrument, albeit from a highly rhythmic standpoint. "I started learning violin when I was seven, and experimented with keyboards when I was 12. I always had a sense of self-expression on keyboard that I never had on violin, because nobody really taught me anything on keyboards, so it was wide open to interpretation. Playing drums has made me very rhythmically oriented. I always build things up from rhythm--that's my starting point."