Vidushi Jyoti Hegde

Jyoti Hegde did not come from a musical family. She was learning the sitar from Dr Bindu Madhav Pathak, a sitar and rudra veena player of the Kirana gharana, when he played the rudra veena at a lecture-demonstration; in her own account the sound of it changed the direction of her life, the gambhirta of the veena's tones striking her as wholly unlike the chanchalata of the sitar.

Her teacher refused to teach her, telling her the instrument was not a woman's domain. She persisted, and he eventually agreed with her father to lend her an old and awkward veena in the expectation that she would abandon the idea; instead she worked at it hard enough that he advised her father to buy her a good instrument, which she says she still plays. She has described going to his house at seven in the morning for a single exercise and practising that one phrase all day. She won first prize for rudra veena in the Akhil Bharatiya Akashvani Sangeet Spardha in 1981-82, was taken on as a regular artist at All India Radio, and won the Karnataka Youth Festival three years running from 1981 to 1983.

Her training moved from khayal towards dhrupad over time. After Pathak she learned from Indudhar Nirody at Dharwad, and later became a disciple of Ustad Asad Ali Khan of the Jaipur beenkar family; The Hindu reports that she began with him at the age of thirty-five. She took a master's degree in music from Karnatak University, Dharwad, and is a Grade-A artist of All India Radio on both rudra veena and sitar.

She made her Darbar Festival debut in London in 2014 and returned in 2023, performing with Surdarshan Chana on jori. In 2025 she played raag Bairagi Bhairav - a raga she learned from Pathak rather than from Asad Ali Khan - at a Sangeet Natak Akademi event in Delhi marking World Music Day and International Yoga Day, where she spoke about the breath control dhrupad demands of a veena player. Her recording Rare Instruments - Rudra Veena was issued by ASA Music in 2012. Published listings of her awards include the Naada Nidhi award, Kala Chetana and Dhrupadmani.

Accounts of her birthplace differ: Wikipedia gives Sirsi in North Kanara, while in a 2015 interview she says she was born in Dharwad, where her father was a range forest officer, and grew up in Belgaum and Sirsi.

Her playing follows Asad Ali Khan's khandarbani manner but is audibly shaped by her continuing work on the sitar. She describes her music as a form of nada yoga, and has emphasised that the rudra veena, alone among Indian string instruments, asks the player for the breath discipline of a dhrupad singer.