Pulse Ensemble consists of Stijn Claerhoudt, Willem Peek, Daan van der Schaft and Ernesto Schuddeboom: four childhood friends who began singing at the Cathedral Choir School Utrecht and in the Cathedral Choir of Utrecht. In 2014 they founded the ensemble to specialise in music from the Dutch-speaking region, and in particular from Utrecht sources.
To that end they research manuscripts and study history and performance practice. They explore the outer limits of early modern scores and experiment with polyphonic improvisation.
Each summer they set out with little more than a tent, sleeping bags and their music books, to sing in the churches, monasteries, cathedrals and streets of Europe.
The singers
Daan van der Schaft countertenor and baritone
Daan began singing lessons at the age of eight at the Cathedral Choir School Utrecht and sang under Gerard Beemster in the Cathedral Choir. Since 2023 he has studied for a master’s in classical singing at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel with Marcel Boone, with lessons at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Rosa Domínguez. He has sung solo parts in Bach’s Mass in B minor, Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Vivaldi’s Gloria, and is a regular guest with professional vocal ensembles, including the Helsinki Chamber Choir.
Ernesto Schuddeboom tenor and multi-instrumentalist
Ernesto is an Amsterdam-based singer and lutenist who focuses on plainchant and polyphony from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources. His interests include oral traditions, historical improvisation such as cantare super librum, and the meeting points of music and visual art. In 2022 he founded Cappella Hadewigis, with which he leads the monthly Gregoriaanse Vespers in Mokum programme. With Artur Dobija he makes ‘fakesimile’ editions of damaged or hard-to-read sources.
Willem Peek baritone
Willem is a PhD candidate in historical musicology and Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, where he studies early modern connections between music, art and knowledge. He studied philosophy and art history at the University of Amsterdam and holds a master’s from the Warburg Institute in London. He sings regularly with Vox Medicea in Florence and with other ensembles in Europe and the US.
Stijn Claerhoudt bass
Stijn completed a master’s in theoretical physics in Utrecht and then studied choral conducting at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn with Hirvo Surva (cum laude, 2024). He leads several choirs and is a project singer with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. As a composer he won second prize at the Prinses Christina Competition at the age of eleven.
Honorary committee
Kurt Bikkembergs