Daniël Brüggen was born in Haarlem where he started playing the recorder at an early age.
He has studied recorder at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Kees Boeke and graduated there as a soloist in 1983. During his conservatory studies he founded the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Recorder Quartet with three fellow students. This proved to be a unique combination of spirits with a great determination to develop the recorder. Three years later, after winning the Brugge Early Music competion in 1981, they conquered the Early Music World and beyond with their unusual repertoire and ensemble perfection. Later on the Recorder Quartet became an established and popular chamber music combination. With this celebrated ensemble he has travelled all over the world and made a variety of recordings for Decca, Channel Classics and NM Classics, two of them winning the prestigious Edison Award. As a soloist he performed with several Ensembles such as London Baroque and forms a duo with harpsichordist Siebe Henstra.  He is teaching at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and is a regular visitor  of the Royal Academy of Music in London where he was appointed Honorary Associate. He has coached many recorder consorts as well as early music ensembles.  In recent years he has been increasingly active as a filmmaker and director, producing several classical music clips (a.o. Royal Wind Music, Zefiro, L’Armonia Sonora, 2010-12) instrumental portraits (Ricercata, 2011) and music documentaries (Sweelinck Fantasies, 2008, The Leiden Choirbooks, 2010).