 In his school years at the University of Ghent, Herreweghe combined studies in medical science and psychiatry with a musical education at the Ghent Conservatory, where Marcel Gazelle, Yehudi Menuhin's accompanist, was his piano teacher.In the same period, he began conducting and in 1969 he founded the Collegium Vocale Gent with a group of fellow students.Very soon Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt took notice of his musical approach, and invited him and the Collegium Vocale Gent to join them in their recordings of the complete Bach cantatas.