Biography Hans Dulfer

Hans Dulfer (born 28 May 1940 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) is a tenor saxophone player of global fame and a giant of Dutch jazz.

He touched his first tenor saxophone in the 1950s, inspired by notorious big sound tenor players like Ike Quebec, Big Jay McNeeley and Coleman Hawkins, their stage acts the pure and powerful examples of the kind of showmanship Dulfer adored and adopted for himself.

Aged 17, Dulfer embarked on a musical career that stretches itself to this very day. Jazz was his thing, not the dull cocktail jazz popular in The Netherlands at the time, but its grassroots incarnation of social comment in music. This, as Dulfer likes to spell out, is not limited to a specific historical period: it is an internal and eternal truth in jazz. Along the way Dulfer picked up just about anything that was musically hip (even tuning in to punk in the 1970s, only to find out that he had been a punk at heart all his life).

Dulfer started out his professional career in the jazz group of Clous van Mechelen. His recording career under his own name took off in 1970 and 1971, when he recorded three albums with the Surinamese group Ritmo Natural. The third of these albums, El Saxofón (1971), was the first LP credited to Hans Dulfer alone.

Dulfer formed and played with many different bands over the years, including Heavy Soul Inc., Reflud ('Dulfer' spelled backwards) and Future Groove Express, to name but a few.These outfits were notorious in clubland. Many top musicians in their own right have played in one or two of Dulfer's bands. In turn, Dulfer contributed to national top bands in the jazz, rock and blues field.

Dayjobbing was a bare necessity for a jazz musician who supports a family of three. Slowly but surely though Dulfer reached the point where he could wave goodbye to his longtime occupation of selling cars - a job in which he excelled to the point of twice winning the national GM Car Seller Award.

In 1990 he was appointed general director of the famous rock venue Paradiso in Amsterdam. Here he instituted club nights for the hip hop and jazzdance scenes, a futuristic approach for a rock club. In the same year his formation of the group Tough Tenors caused an uproar all over the country for its loudness and its often unpredictable output.

As a solo musician his album Hyperbeat (1995), notably the single 'Streetbeats', became a bestseller in Japan, where Dulfer toured relentlessly. The 1990s were a golden age for Dulfer, with the albums Big Boy (1994),Dig! (1996) and Skin Deep (1998) also performing well.

Dulfer is the father of Candy Dulfer. Father and daughter released the successful 'Dulfer / Dulfer' album in 2002.

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