Laurence Dreyfus

Laurence Dreyfus, treble viol and director, was born in Boston, Mass. After learning the cello with Leonard Rose at Juilliard, he studied the viol with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatoire at Brussels, which awarded him its Diplome supérieur. As a bass viol player, he has recorded CDs of Bach's viola da gamba sonatas, Marais's Pièces de violes and Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concert (all on Simax), and collaborated with Sylvia McNair in a Grammy-winning album of Purcell songs…

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Laurence Dreyfus, treble viol and director, was born in Boston, Mass. After learning the cello with Leonard Rose at Juilliard, he studied the viol with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatoire at Brussels, which awarded him its Diplome supérieur.

As a bass viol player, he has recorded CDs of Bach’s viola da gamba sonatas, Marais’s Pièces de violes and Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concert (all on Simax), and collaborated with Sylvia McNair in a Grammy-winning album of Purcell songs (on Philips).

As a musicologist, Laurence has published Bach’s Continuo Group and Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Harvard, 1987 and 1996); the latter of which won the Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society for the best book of the year.

Dreyfus taught at Yale, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the Royal Academy of Music before becoming Thurston Dart Professor in 1995 at King’s College London, where he taught music history and performance.

In 2002 he took British citizenship and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2005 he moved to Oxford University where he is Professor of Music and a Fellow of Magdalen College.

Aug 2010