Ex Deep Purple guitarist releases holiday album

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore made his name in the hard rock bands Deep Purple and Rainbow, but he's gone in a completely different direction for the past decade or so. Blackmore and his partner Candice Night lead a group called Blackmore's Night that plays mainly acoustic renaissance-influenced music, and they've got a holiday collection out now called Winter Carols. The album features all-new versions of seasonal favorites including "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "Good King Wenceslas," and "We Three Kings."

Blackmore and Night told us that the album was in the works for some time, and one of the hold-ups was determining when to actually release it: (Blackmore) "We started this about two years ago, I think, so it's been on the shelf for quite a time. Unfortunately, with these tunes, you can only release them at one particular time of year, so we kind of waited until the right moment. And we were gonna release it in the summer, to see what kind of reaction we would get, but we decided against that, right, Candy?" (Night) "Yeah, I don't think the summer would have worked for this kind of record (laughter)."
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