Not Such a Dark Night:
 Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night Share A Timeless Tapestry

Blackmore’s Night/Nature’s Light/E-A-R Music
Four out of Five Stars

Given his past history as a harbinger of hard rock, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s current collaboration with singer and woodwind player Candice Night in the group Blackmore’s Night might strike some as curious at best. Nevertheless, the band has established its niche, with more than a dozen albums devoted to medieval and renaissance music of a decidedly vintage variety. It’s not the sort of sound heard within the musical mainstream, and indeed, it’s distinctly different, not only from Blackmore’s previous pursuits with Deep Purple and Blackmore’s Rainbow, but most notably, from much of what passes for modern music in general.

The duo’s new album Nature’s Light boasts a set of songs as precious as the title implies. In addition to Night on vocals and woodwinds and the various support players that provide  keyboards, bass, violin, percussion and backing vocals, Blackmore adds to the instrumental arsenal with acoustic guitars, hurdy-gurdy, nickelharpe and mandola. Their efforts veer towards madrigal music, all dainty designs that often sound like a series of gypsy-like serenades. Songs such as “Four Winds,” “Once Upon December” and “The Twisted Oak” are both quaint and charming, all enhanced with a light lilt, a fanciful flourish and shared finesse. 

The pair met in 1989 when Night was a radio station intern and Deep Purple was in town to play the station staff in a charity soccer game. Naturally, Night went along, and dutifully asked for Blackmore’s autograph. The guitarist was instantly smitten, and later, the two met up for a drink and then ended up immersed in conversation until the wee hours of the morning. A friendship evolved into a romantic relationship and naturally morphed into a musical collaboration from there. 

“I had gone on the road with Ritchie in 1993, and as soon as he stepped off that stage he would be playing Renaissance music—in the hotel room, in his home, in the car,” Night recalls. “I think people who followed Ritchie since the beginning of his career saw the influences there. When he was onstage and started a jam, it would often begin with a 16th century melody originally rumored to be written by Henry the VIII called ‘Greensleeves.’ When he wrote with Rainbow, they started by doing songs like ‘Temple of the King’ or ‘16th Century Greensleeves.’ Even when he did the solo for ‘Smoke on the Water,’ it wasn’t done in singular notes, but rather in medieval modal scales of 4ths and 5ths.”

Night admits that she didn’t become familiar with that particular style of music until she and Blackmore became involved, and only after the two began cohabitating did her interest in it increase. “I had never heard medieval or Renaissance music before Ritchie,” she admits. “I moved in with him in 1991, and we lived in a dark English Tudor home with a minstrels gallery in the middle of the woods. He would be playing Renaissance music on the sound system and looking out the window to the beauty of nature outside, and it all just made sense. The audio and the visual were in perfect harmony. That’s when it kind of clicked for me. So when he left Deep Purple and put Rainbow back together, I was writing lyrics for them and doing backing vocals. Being around the studio while the other musicians were doing their backing tracks, Ritchie and I would sit in front of a fireplace and watch the snow come down outside the window of the farm house studio where they were recording. We eventually started writing songs just for us. It became a musical escape from the corporate world of pressure and friction that the rock and roll world had become for him.”

Night insists that the duo’s initial goal wasn’t to share their music with the wider world. “It was a very personal journey, and originally we didn’t think we would put those songs out for anyone else to hear,” she recalls. “But when we played them for our friends and they liked them, we thought other people might enjoy them as well. Those songs became our debut CD Shadow of the Moon almost 25 years ago. We’re still on this musical journey together, and we still utilize our music as an escape from the pressures of the modern world.”

To be sure, the new album does offer some hint of Blackmore’s earlier bombastic approach on “Der Letzte Musketier,” a full blown, amplified extravaganza that recalls the soaring solos he played with his initial outfits. Likewise, “Nature’s Light” boasts a grandiose sound that would seem to suggest the royalty’s arrival at the crown court.

“I simply look at music as being music.” Night reflects. “I think that we just do good melodic music. I’m not really comfortable being placed in a box or a genre or having a neat little label placed on us. I truly believe the point of creative process is to kick down the walls of that confining box and, as with any art, to have the creative freedom to play whatever you want to at any given moment.”

Given that explanation, and the emotion imbued in the music, it’s hardly surprising to find Night taking a philosophical stance that affirms both their muse and their music.

“As human beings we are constantly changing, constantly evolving,” Night notes. “We aren’t the same person we were five minutes ago. So the music we create should be constantly changing, ever evolving. We love having the freedom to be able to create Renaissance music, folk rock music, instrumentals, ballads, story songs, tavern or gypsy music. We just follow what our heart wants to play at the time.” 

Photos by Michael Keel.