MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST Randy Raine-Reusch was in Japan a while back, as part of his ongoing cross-cultural musical odyssey, when a call came from Vancouver-based super-producer Bruce Fairbairn.

He was preparing to record with The Cranberries, and he wanted to bring them to Reusch's West Coast home to tutor the band in world music.

"(Fairbairn) said he needed to take the Cranberries to Vancouver to get "Reusched," he chuckles.

"Now I'm an industry term."

The Cranberries are by no means the only ones getting the Reusch treatment. When Aerosmith wanted to bring some exotic textures to their landmark Pump album, they visited Reusch's home, and tore through his collection of 600 instruments. He even tutored singer Steven Tyler on the music of alien cultures, and the two ended up close friends.

"(Tyler) looked at me one time with big doleful eyes and he said: `You know, man? You do what I dreamed of,'" he says, still shaken that a rock star envies him. Tyler landed him consulting work with Cirque du Soliel.

Now, Reusch gets a chance to step into the spotlight on his own behalf. His world-music quartet, Asza, performs Sunday at the Acoustic Waves concert series at the Great Canadian Theatre Company. It's the culmination of his lifelong desire to explore the possibilities of taking music and instruments from different cultures, mixing them together and seeing what happens.

"European instruments have been created to play very fast and loud and transfer to all different parts of the orchestra," he explains.

"The problem is they kind of lack something that we find in a lot of traditional music around the world. They lack a color."

To find those colors, Reusch has travelled the world, sitting in with master musicians, finding unorthodox instruments and trying to understand the music's cultural context.

Asza brings together players from different cultural backgrounds (Latin, French-Canadian, Chinese) and takes a "no-borders" approach to creating music. Arabic influences can sit comfortably alongside Celtic flavors. Their recent CD and concerts have been earning the group rave reviews.

"There's a tremendous emotional power to it," he says.

It's important to appreciate the source of the music, but the cultural context is not mandatory to appreciate it, he adds.

"Remember, music is coming from human beings and there is such a thing as a human experience," he says.

"There's something deep in other cultures that touches something deep in us."