Devendra Murdeshwar

Devendra Murdeshwar was born on 19 September 1923 at Masur, then in Mysore State. His father played the violin, tabla and bansuri as a hobby, and Devendra learnt flute and tabla before settling on the flute. In 1941 he went to Bombay to study under Pannalal Ghosh, whose principal disciple and son-in-law he became.

He was a staff artist at All India Radio in Delhi, and through that work came into contact with musicians including Allauddin Khan, Omkarnath Thakur, Mallikarjun Mansur and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. His career combined performance with flute-making, teaching, adjudicating, broadcasting and producing classical music for All India Radio. He toured the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and East Germany, and recordings were issued on the HMV, Nonesuch and Rasa Music labels. He trained a number of students, among them Nityanand Haldipur, Lyon Leifer, Vijay Kabinhittal, Ravindra Samant and Naresh Kumta.

He died on 29 January 2000, aged seventy-seven.

He developed Pannalal Ghosh's approach to the bansuri and to raga music, adding compositions of his own to the repertory and adapting for the flute a number of vocal compositions not previously played on it. His pupil Lyon Leifer records recitals of three unbroken hours. As a flute-maker he supplied instruments played by Pannalal Ghosh, and drew on Boehm's and other Western work in refining the instrument. As a teacher he refused to let students memorise passages, providing examples instead and pressing them to grasp the structuring principle of each kind of improvisation.