Legendary Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore shifted his musical focus away from hard rock in the late '90s and started concentrating on his love of Renaissance-era music. He formed Blackmore's Night with his fiancée, vocalist/lyricist Candice Night, and recruited other musicians from around the world to combine elements of world music, Renaissance, new age, folk, and rock & roll. Blackmore didn't exactly retire his Fender Stratocaster, but he plays acoustic guitar almost exclusively in Blackmore's Night. His acoustic guitar melodies and Night's clear, ethereal voice blend with a host of instruments such as mandolins, keyboards, pennywhistles, violins, tambourines, military drums, and hurdy-gurdies. Blackmore once described the band's sound as "Mike Oldfield meets Enya."

The true power of music is impossible to define and yet we can all feel it when the sonic planets align. The magical impact of the finest rock'n'roll - that hazy but overwhelming blend of inspiration and perspiration - sustains us through dark times and fills our hearts with joy and strength. Music unites us, nourishes us and provides us with an emotional clarity that the rest of our turbulent lives singularly fails to offer. For those reasons and many more, we must proudly acknowledge and salute the true architects of the musical world that we call home. Above all else, Ritchie Blackmore is one of rock's greatest architects; a six-string seer that laid robust foundations upon which four decades of thunderous, perpetual evolution have taken place.

With shared love for the tradition of Renaissance and Folk-Rock music, legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and award-winning lyricist and singer Candice Night founded Blackmore’s Night in 1997. They have been enchanting audiences around the world ever since. After hitting off the celebrations for their 25th anniversary with a fully remixed edition of their debut album “Shadow Of The Moon” in 2023, this year Candice and Ritchie continue with the worldwide release of a very special edition of their acclaimed 3rd studio album “Fires At Midnight”. Originally released in July 2001.

Volume 2 of Connoisseur Collection's 2 part series on Ritchie Blackmore's overall career. Where Volume 1 focused largely on Blackmore's '60s sessions and his Purple work from 1968 to 1974, Volume 2 is more of a grab bag which has a lot of variety. Originally intended mostly to cover the period from 1975 (Rainbow's formation) onwards, it actually covers from 1965 to 1984 with several memorable pit-stops in between. This great CD is bolstered by great liner notes and great pictures, including some magazine covers quite rare to find anywhere else. Anyone remotely interested in the heights to which Blackmore can reach will be rewarded here.

It's a long way from the simple and rather forgotten days of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's early dabbling in English skiffle to belting out some of the most memorable leads and riffs in hard rock. This well-researched collection traces the roots of a young "Man In Black" fingering the fretboard to nothing sounding that spectacularly different from his peers in the beginning to smoking the rest of the pack while fronting the multi-million-selling Deep Purple. Unearthed are four previously unreleased Deep Purple tracks, lost treasures that are worth the price alone, particularly the earliest recorded live version of "Highway Star," still in its infancy before being solidified in the studio on Machine Head.

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore resurrected the beloved hard rock band Rainbow in 1995 for the album Stranger in Us All. The new lineup – technically named Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow – was not an all-star who's who of hard rock like the groundbreaking original version with vocalist Ronnie James Dio or the radio-targeted AOR version with vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. All incarnations of Rainbow, even the mid-period lineup fronted by bellower Graham Bonnet, are generally revered in hard rock circles. In its own way, Rainbow's music was just as influential as the music Blackmore made during his years in Deep Purple.

In 2017, legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore brought his new Rainbow line up to the UK for three unique concerts; these memorable musical moments will be released in high quality format on a double disc CD set. Also included in this amazing package will be the first time ever seen backstage videos. Go behind the scenes with Rainbow. Special interviews exclusive to this video set with Ritchie Blackmore, Ronnie Romero, Jens Johansson, Bob Nouveau, Drummer Dave, the lovely backing singers Lady Lynn and Candice Night as well as the phenomenal crew that brings these shows to the fans; production managers, lighting director, guitar technician etc.

English guitar virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Ritchie Blackmore is a principal architect of the early hard rock and heavy metal sound. A scholar of blues, heavy metal, progressive rock, folk, and classical, he is a longtime member of Deep Purple, the founder of Rainbow and Blackmore's Night, and is responsible for one of the most enduring riffs of all time, Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water." With the latter group, he has recorded dozens of albums, including the classics Fireball (1971) and Machine Head (1972), and with the supergroup Rainbow (which also featured Ronnie James Dio for a time), he issued eight studio LPs and landed chart hits with "Since You've Been Gone" and "Stone Cold." In the late 1990s, he formed the Baroque, Celtic, and Renaissance music-inspired progressive folk group Blackmore's Night, and went on to release ten albums, with highlights arriving via 2001's Fires at Midnight and 2013's Dancer and the Moon. In 2016, Blackmore was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame alongside his Deep Purple bandmates.

Ritchie Blackmore is an British guitarist and songwriter, began his professional career as a session musician as a member of the instrumental band The Outlaws and as a backing musician of pop singers Glenda Collins, Heinz, Screaming Lord Sutch, Neil Christian, etc.. Blackmore was also one of the original members of Deep Purple, playing jam-style rock music which mixed simple guitar riffs and organ sounds During his solo career, he established neo-classical metal band called Rainbow which fused baroque music influences elements with hard rock…

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow is the first studio album by British rock band Rainbow, released in 1975. During studio sessions in Tampa Bay, Florida on 12 December 1974, Blackmore originally planned to record the solo single "Black Sheep of the Family"- a cover of a track by the band Quatermass from 1970 - and the newly composed "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves", which was to be the B-side. Other musicians involved included singer/lyricist Ronnie James Dio and drummer Gary Driscoll of blues rock band Elf, and cellist Hugh McDowell of ELO. Satisfied with the two tracks, Blackmore decided to extend the sessions to a full album.

Ritchie Blackmore is an British guitarist and songwriter, began his professional career as a session musician as a member of the instrumental band The Outlaws and as a backing musician of pop singers Glenda Collins, Heinz, Screaming Lord Sutch, Neil Christian, etc.. Blackmore was also one of the original members of Deep Purple, playing jam-style rock music which mixed simple guitar riffs and organ sounds During his solo career, he established neo-classical metal band called Rainbow which fused baroque music influences elements with hard rock…

Rainbow (also known as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow or Blackmore's Rainbow) are a British rock band led by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. Estabilished in 1975…

Perhaps the first example of "dragon rock" – a style perfected by bands like Iron Maiden and Dio in the early to mid-'80s – was Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, a rather pretentious 1975 collection from the guitarist's first post-Deep Purple project. Fittingly enough, a young Ronnie James Dio provides the goblin-like frontman presence required by the increasingly Baroque Blackmore. The young Dio is at his best when he fully gives in to his own and Blackmore's medieval fantasy leanings, in hard-rocking tracks like "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves" and "Man on the Silver Mountain." The dark, trudging doom rock of "Self Portrait" most clearly showcases what they were capable of. The album's ponderous lyrics are occasionally punctuated by poetic phrases such as "crossbows in the firelight."

Ritchie Blackmore belongs to the most gifted guitarists that rock and metal ever saw to date. Renowned from his days with Deep Purple and Rainbow, Blackmore has created an iconic sound with his guitar that is timeless and a strong element of the success of the mentioned bands…

In June 2016, legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore made his much-anticipated return to rock music as Ritchie Blackmor' s Rainbow played three concerts in Europe, two in Germany and one in England. Recordings from the two German shows at Loreley and Bietigheim make up this live album Memories In Rock. The setlist, combining classic tracks from both Deep Purple and Rainbow, was exactly what the fans had wished for…