Doors: 19:00
Event start: 20.00
Seated concert
MUNCH and Oslo Jazz Festival are honoured to offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for fans of Asha Puthli – both old and new - to see her perform her legendary hits with her acclaimed live band.
Perhaps best known for her stirring vocals on free jazz legend Ornette Coleman’s seminal album Science Fiction (1972), Asha Puthli is a pioneer of jazz, funk, soul, electronic dance and disco.
Born and raised in Bombay, Asha moved to New York to pursue her love of jazz. There, she met legendary John Hammond from Columbia Records, who had discovered acts like Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Leonard Cohen to Bob Dylan, and Asha herself! Hammond introduced her to Ornette Coleman, with whom she recorded two tracks - "What Reason Could I Give" and "All My Life". It was the first time Coleman had worked with a vocal artist.
Asha’s unique, stirring vocals won her the prestigious DownBeat Critics award alongside her hero Ella Fitzgerlad, capitulating her to Jazz Royalty status. Asha went on to feature on Pulitzer prize winner Henry Threadgill’s groundbreaking album 'Easily Slip Into Another World' and has worked with a long list of greats, including Duke Ellington, Barry White, Roy Ayers, and Don Cherry, to name a few.
Although Puthli is a jazz improviser at heart, her major label recordings reflect her wide-ranging aesthetic, moving between wave and new age. She has ten solo albums, which gained her a cult following, various film appearances, a hosting of a music show, a placement in the center stage by Andy Warhol in his famous time capsules, and being sampled by hip hop heavyweights, including Jay-Z.
Her breakthrough disco album of 1976, The Devil is Loose, was hailed as ‘an instant classic’ by The New York Times, with the iconic track "Space Talk" being picked up by DJs and clubs worldwide, including Maurice Fulton and the infamous New York Loft parties, and has been launched into outer space! Asha was a Studio 54 favourite and did a special live performance at the iconic disco party.
In recent years Puthli has garnered a whole new generation of fans with her re-releases on Mr.Bongo; her first remix album "Disco Mystic" featuring remixes by a new generation of artists and Maurice Fulton himself; the critically acclaimed "Space Talk" Remix EP by the legendary Dimiti From Paris, both on the Naya Beat label, and recently the acclaimed jazz infused single "Spring Has Sprung" for SOYUZ featuring Asha & Sven Wunder on Mr Bongo.
©Suki Dhanda/The Observer
