Born on 10 December 1966, Rolf Munkes started playing the guitar at the age of twelve. After his Abitur (A-levels) in 1987, Rolf went on to study plastic engineering. He left college soon afterwards in order to become a professional musician. Rolf made his living by teaching the guitar and in 1992 he became the co-founder of ABRA, who have released two CDs so far. They have already played several hundred gigs and in September 1998 they got their first recording deal abroad. In 1996 Rolf enrolled at the Music Academy in Remscheid. Apart from jazz guitarist Michael Borner, Rolf was taught by several teachers, including Michael Sagmeister, Peter Wölpl and Wayne Krantz. Rolf finished his studies with top-grades. He was also taught by the Frankfurt-based jazz guitarist Mathias Löffler, about whom Rolf once commented: "Although he was trying to win me over to jazz, I still love rock music, but I also admire Robben Ford, whom I discovered through Mathias. This guy is a genius at phrasing." Having set up his own digital recording studio in 1998, Rolf went straight into working on the songs for his solo-project. There he developed his own distinctive style, which is characterised by clean and fast legato-lines. The tracks on his first demo CD show a frequent use of two-part lines which are either played by a second guitar or even the bass. The entire recording consists of very creative compositions which are played most accurately as well. Rolf presented his demo-CD live at the International Music Fair 1999 in Frankfurt at the Rath Amps booth, where he received excellent feedback from visitors, musicians as well as from the media. The trade magazine Gitarre & Bass, to name but one, published a very good review of it. In 1998 and 2000 he also featured in two Michael Suljic productions for Walt Disney Enterprises, where he showed his versatility as a guitar player. Two sound samples of Rolf's demo-CD were published in issue 06/99 of the Soundcheck magazine. In September 1999 he was awarded the German Rock Prize in the category Best Instrumentalist. He also became the best participant at the Finale of the European Guitar Festival in Lausanne, Switzerland in November 2000. His CD was selected out of 200. He has been playing with the German metal band Vanize since October 2000 and his first solo-album No More Obscurity was released in November the same year on the Finish label Lion Music. Guest musicians were Anders Johansson (Yngwie Malmsteen, Hammerfall) and Lance King (Balance of Power). The album features instrumentals along with vocal tracks in the best hard rock style. Rolf founded his band Empire in May 2001. Their forthcoming album Hypnotica will be released in October on Lion Music and features musicians like Neil Murray, Mark Boals and Anders Johansson.

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