Pandit Dhruba Ghosh

Dhruba Ghosh was born in Mumbai in 1957, the younger son of the tabla maestro Pandit Nikhil Ghosh and a nephew of the flautist Pandit Pannalal Ghosh. Like his elder brother Pandit Nayan Ghosh, he was first trained by their father in vocal music and tabla. His brother has said that at about fourteen Dhruba became fascinated by the sarangi and took to it quickly.

Accounts of his sarangi training differ. Wikipedia lists Dattaram Parvatakar of All India Radio, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Ustad Sagiruddin Khan as his teachers. Writing in Scroll.in, the tabla player and writer Aneesh Pradhan says he had a single lesson from Mohammad Sagiruddin Khan and otherwise built his own identity by drawing on many sources; the sarangi player Nicolas Magriel, who knew him, gives the same account of one lesson followed by self-teaching. His brother told the Times of India that Sagiruddin Khan approved his technique. Both Pradhan and Magriel describe his playing as shaped by recordings of Bundu Khan and by Pandit Ram Narayan's tone, and by vocalists including Ustad Amir Khan and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan.

He performed across India and Europe, latterly living part of each year in Brussels, and headed the music department of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Mumbai. Working with a Belgian luthier, he added a fourth and then a fifth playing string to the sarangi. He also took part in cross-genre projects, including work with the American group the Paul Winter Consort.

He died of a heart attack at his home on the Bhavan's College campus in Andheri, Mumbai, on 10 July 2017. Reports of his age at death vary between 59 and 60.

He worked mainly as a soloist, moving from formally structured presentation towards freer, open-ended recitals, and was known for paltas — note-permutation exercises — in the manner of Bundu Khan. He drew openly on sitar and sarod phrasing, unusually for a sarangi player.