Blackmore's Night

Born April 14, 1945, in Weston-super-Mare, England, legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple and Rainbow redirected his energies from hard rock during the late 1990s toward his longstanding passion for Renaissance-era repertoire. He launched Blackmore's Night together with fiancée and vocalist/lyricist Candice Night, born May 8, 1971, in Hauppauge, Long Island, New York, and assembled musicians from multiple countries to merge world music, Renaissance, new age, folk, and rock & roll influences. Although he never completely set aside his Fender Stratocaster, Blackmore confined himself almost exclusively to acoustic guitar in the new project. His acoustic lines intertwined with Night’s clear, ethereal vocals across an array of instruments that encompassed mandolins, keyboards, pennywhistles, violins, tambourines, military drums, and hurdy-gurdies. Blackmore once characterized the ensemble’s sound as “Mike Oldfield meets Enya.”

The pair first crossed paths around 1989 when Deep Purple faced employees of a Long Island radio station where Night worked. A former model who studied communications at the New York Institute of Technology and hosted her own radio show, Night shared Blackmore’s fascination with Renaissance culture, and the two quickly became a couple. The genesis of Blackmore’s Night grew directly out of the final phase of his preceding groups. After again exiting Deep Purple following the musically disappointing 1993 album The Battle Rages On…, Blackmore revived Rainbow—technically under the original Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow banner—with largely unknown musicians for 1995’s Stranger in Us All, an album for which Night wrote lyrics to four songs. Record company executives overruled his preference for a different name, insisting that Rainbow’s recognition would simplify marketing.

Once Stranger in Us All was complete, Blackmore chose to pursue Renaissance-inspired material he had long admired yet never performed himself. Informal home sessions in which Night spontaneously sang along to his playing gave rise to Blackmore’s Night. The duo’s debut album, Shadow of the Moon, co-written by Night and Blackmore, appeared domestically in 1998 and featured Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson on flute for “Play Minstrel Play.” Under a Violet Moon followed in 1999; anticipating a full tour, Blackmore deliberately shaped its songs to be more upbeat and stage-friendly. Additional studio albums arrived throughout the noughties—Ghost of a Rose in 2003, The Village Lanterne in 2006, and Secret Voyage in 2008. In 2010 the pair issued their eighth studio album, Autumn Sky, dedicated to their newly born daughter; it reached the number 15 spot on the German album charts. Night released her solo debut, Reflections, in 2011. Dancer and the Moon, Blackmore’s Night’s ninth release, surfaced in 2013, and All Our Yesterdays appeared in 2015, both issued via Frontiers Records.