Laurence Dreyfus, director of the viol consort Phantasm, first learned the viola da gamba as a self-taught musician and later with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, after he had already begun performing concerts. As a music historian, Dreyfus has written three books on Bach and Wagner, published by Harvard University Press. He has taught at Yale and Stanford Universities, and most recently at the University of Oxford, where he became emeritus in 2015. He now lives in Berlin, where, as a doctoral student, he once spent two inspiring years researching Bach on both sides of the (then) Wall. After nearly a quarter century in England, he has now established his new base there, from which he continues to conduct research, perform concerts, and record new repertoire.