Pandit Nayan Ghosh

Nayan Ghosh was born on 28 April 1956 into one of the most closely documented musical families in Hindustani music. His father, Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, was a tabla player, teacher and writer; his uncle was the flautist Pandit Pannalal Ghosh; his younger brother was the sarangi player Pandit Dhruba Ghosh.

He was initiated into vocal music and tabla in early childhood by his father, and according to his own account began focused sitar training from about the age of ten, also from his father. The sitar was already in the family: his grandfather Akshay Kumar Ghosh played the instrument, having studied with Bhagwan Chandra Das of the Senia tradition. Nayan Ghosh describes receiving guidance at an impressionable age from Ustad Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, his father's guru, and from Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh, his father's first teacher. Since the 1990s he has taken further guidance on stringed-instrument compositional structures and rare ragas from the sarod player Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta.

He began touring at eighteen, in 1974, and has since performed widely in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, and taught at universities including Emory, Kent State, Washington and Colorado, and at the Lausanne Conservatory. As an accompanist he has played for Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Pandit Jasraj, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and others.

He is the principal figure at Sangit Mahabharati in Juhu, Mumbai, teaching there and continuing his father's work as an institution builder.

Wikipedia places him in the Farrukhabad gharana of tabla; his own site describes him as a repository of the Farrukhabad, Delhi, Ajrada and Lucknow baaj, which is how tabla players trained in the Nikhil Ghosh line usually describe their repertoire. On the sitar he emphasises a balance of gayaki (vocal) and tantrakari (instrumental) approaches.