Blackmore’s Night is a British-American neo-medieval folk rock band formed in 1997, consisting mainly of Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night. Candice Night was a Rainbow fan, and first encountered Ritchie Blackmore to ask him for an autograph in 1989, while she was working for a local New York radio station. The two started living together in 1991, and discovered they both had a passionate interest in Renaissance music. During the reformed Rainbow’s recording of the album Stranger in Us All in 1995, on which Night contributed some of the lyrics and backing harmony vocals, the duo were already gearing up their debut album. In 1997, the project started as being a pun of their own names, which would consist of themselves plus session musicians.
Their debut album Shadow of the Moon was a musical success and featured Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull on flute for the song “Play Minstrel Play”. In subsequent albums, particularly Fires at Midnight, there was an increased incorporation of rock guitar into the music, while maintaining a folk rock direction. Over time, Night has increasingly participated instrumentally as well as singing the vocals, and is competent on a wide variety of Renaissance instruments.
The group performs at Renaissance fairs and Renaissance festivals, as well as in stand-alone concert tours in appropriate venues including ‘castle tours’ of Europe, where they perform in historic surroundings for an audience dressed largely in period costume. The duo has been successful enough to inspire a number of international tribute bands including: Renaissance Night, the Italian Morning Star, The Midnight and Elflore. They have also performed the music for MagiQuest, a live simulation game.
In 2006, Night performed a duet with Andi Deris on Helloween’s “Light the Universe”, which was released as a single in certain countries and is available on their album Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy, released in the same year. In June 2008, the duo released its seventh studio album called Secret Voyage, a mix of medieval-sounding tracks and some contemporary ones. In addition to some covers of some traditional folk music (“Locked Within the Crystal Ball” is from the fourteenth century) and some originals, Blackmore’s Night also performed a cover of a Rainbow song (“Rainbow Eyes”) and an Elvis Presley cover (“Can’t Help Falling in Love”).
A new album titled Autumn Sky was released at the end of 2010 in Europe and in 2011 in the U.S. This was followed by Dancer and the Moon, in 2013, an album featuring covers of songs by Randy Newman, Uriah Heep and another Rainbow song (“Temple Of The King”, originally from the album Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow). Their album, All Our Yesterdays, was released in September 2015. Their latest studio album, Nature’s Light was released worldwide in March 2021. In 2022 Night was featured on the single “We’re Gonna Be Drinking” with the German folkrock band d’Artagnan from their album Falsenfest (2022). Blackmore’s Night had previously made a version of the song on their 2003 album Ghost of a Rose called “All for One”.
