Pandit Ashok Pathak

Ashok Pathak was born in Kolkata, the eldest son of the sitar and surbahar player Pandit Balaram Pathak, and began training with him at five in the guru-shishya manner. He gave his first concert in Kolkata in 1964, at the Bhartiya Sangeet Kala Parishad festival, and afterwards toured widely with his father.

He took a Master's degree in sitar from Allahabad Music University in 1978. In 1979 the Indian Council for Cultural Relations posted him to Suriname as a visiting professor of music, where he taught and performed until 1982. He later directed a music university in Lelystad in the Netherlands and in Hamburg, headed the Indian classical department at the Koorenhuis world-music school in The Hague for twenty-two years, and has since led Indian classical music at the Music Academy of The Hague. He received the Surmani award in 1971.

Pathak extended his father's manner: a long alap, careful meend, and gamak and zamzama work in fast passages, applied across an unusually wide range of the instrument. He plays both sitar and surbahar, and composes.