Candy Dulfer was born in September, 1969 in Amsterdam. She began playing the drums at the age of five. As a six-year-old, she started to play the soprano saxophone. At age seven, she switched to alto saxophone and later began playing in a local concert band Jeugd Doet Leven (“Youth Brings Life”) in Zuiderwoude. Dulfer played her first solo on stage with her father’s band De Perikels (“The Perils”). At age eleven, she made her first recordings for the album I Didn’t Ask (1981) of De Perikels. In 1982, when she was twelve years old, she played as a member of Rosa King’s Ladies Horn section at the North Sea Jazz Festival. According to Dulfer, King encouraged her to become a band leader. In 1984, at age fourteen, she started the band Funky Stuff.
Dulfer’s band performed throughout the Netherlands and in 1987 was the opening act for two of Madonna’s European concerts. In 1988, Prince invited Dulfer on stage to play an improvised solo during one of his European shows. In 1989 Dulfer appeared in Prince’s “Partyman” video. Dulfer performed session work with Eurythmics guitarist and producer Dave Stewart.
She was a guest musician for Pink Floyd during the band’s performance at Knebworth in 1990,] from which several tracks were released on a multi-artist live album and video, Live at Knebworth ’90. The Knebworth show has since been released as part of the Pink Floyd box set The Later Years 1987-2019.
Dulfer was also the featured saxophonist on Van Morrison’s A Night in San Francisco, an album in 1993, and performed with Alan Parsons and his band at the World Liberty Concert in 1995. Dulfer collaborated with her father Hans Dulfer on the duet album Dulfer Dulfer in 2001. She joined Prince’s band in 2004 for his Musixology Live 2004ever tour. In 2007, she released her ninth studio album Candy Store. The album reached a No. 2 position in Billboard’s Contemorary Jazz chart. Her songs “Candy Store” and “L.A. Citylights” reached the No. 1 position in Smooth Jazz National Airplay charts in the United States.
Dulfer is mostly a self-taught musician except for some training in a concert band and a few months of music lessons. Until 2010 Dulfer played a Selmer Mk VI alto – which is visible in the majority of early photographs. In 2010 she became an endorsee of the Dutch Free Wind saxophone, created by Friso Heidinga, who started building saxophones in Amsterdam in 2009.
