The Pulse Ensemble consists of Stijn Claerhoudt, Willem Peek, Daan van der Schaft and Ernesto Schuddeboom: four childhood friends who began singing together when they were about eight years old 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 Low Countries, drawing especially on manuscripts from Brabant, Holland and Utrecht.
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.
The ensemble’s work has been supported by the Performing Arts Fund NL (Fonds Podiumkunsten), the Provinciaal Utrechts Genootschap, the Kees Eijrond Fonds and the Vermeulen Brauckman Stichting, among others.
Highlights of recent years include concerts and performances at the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht (2019), at Klassiek op het Amstelveld (2022), at the Polish early music festival Pieśń Naszych Korzeni in Jarosław and the Börzsöny Baroque Days in Hungary (2024), and in the Fringe programme of the Utrecht Early Music Festival (2025). The ensemble also sang at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (2020) and live on NPO Radio 4 from the Spiegelzaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (2022), and reached the semi-finals of the International Van Wassenaer Competition (2026). Its debut album, ’t Schrickelik Tempeest, was released in 2021.
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 a Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, where he studies the interplay of music, art and knowledge in the early modern period. 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. In 2026 he founded ydraulis, an ensemble of (aspiring) professional singers and instrumentalists from conservatories and universities across the Boston area that performs the music for Vespers in Cambridge, MA, directly from historical notation.
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