So German!

Slick and nostalgic, yet unmistakably modern, Germany’s Max Raabe & Palast Orchester play Montréal. This is Art-Deco meets Cabaret!

Join the ever-elegant, debonair Raabe and his 12-piece orchestra for an evening of vintage glamour and sophistication. The Berlin-based crooner performs ballroom hits of the 1920s and ’30s, along with original songs and a few modern surprises.

Max Raabe

Max Raabe, born 1962 in Lünen, has actually always sung – in the youth choir, the chantry and on his bicycle. Max Raabe moved to Berlin in his early twenties to study opera singing. He financed his studies with little performances and in 1986 he founded the Palast Orchester with some fellow students. In 1992 Max Raabe wrote his first hit “Kein Schwein ruft mich an” (Why Does No One Call) and appeared on stage under the direction of Peter Zadek in Heinrich Mann´s “Der blaue Engel” (Blue Angel).

Parallel to the increasing success and international career with the Palast Orchester, Max Raabe gives concerts with pianist Christoph Israel. Their duo-CD “Über´s Meer” (Over The Sea) was released 2010 by Universal / Decca. Max Raabe´s commitment to the remembrance of 20s/30s music has received various awards. In particular he was presented with the ECHO Classic in 2000 for his interpretation of “Mack the Knife”, the Paul-Lincke-Ring of the City of Goslar in 2005, the cultural prize of his hometown Lünen in 2007, and in 2012 the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin. Since 2007 Max Raabe is successor to German comedy-legend Loriot as honorary MC for the yearly Berlin opera gala of the German AIDS foundation. He has also performed for many charity events amongst which are the Opera Village project in Africa founded by Christoph Schlingensief, Yehudi Menuhin´s Live Music Now and the Berlin City Mission. Supported are also the movement Schools Against Racism and the initiative Children´s Home Romania. In the summer of 2010 Max Raabe wrote together with producer, singer and composer Annette Humpe the album “Küssen kann man nicht alleine” (One Cannot Kiss Alone), which was awarded Platinum in 2012. That year the successful duo´s second album “Für Frauen ist das kein Problem” (For Women It´s No Problem) was released, which was soon to receive Gold.

Palast Orchester

The Palast Orchester was founded in 1986 by Max Raabe and a group of fellow music students in order to play music from the period of Germany´s Golden Twenties. In 1992 they found themselves in the German charts with their song “Kein Schwein ruft mich an” (Why does no one call), written by Max Raabe. Teaming up with film director Sönke Wortmann two years later for the film “Der bewegte Mann” (The Most Desired Man) made them known to a wider audience. Concert tours abroad were soon to follow, the number of which clearly increased after the year 2000. At this time Max Raabe & Palast Orchester received an ECHO award for their CD “Charming Weill” and also scored well in international charts with two albums on which they interpreted modern pop songs in the style of the 20s. Specially their versions of “Sex Bomb”, “Oops, I did it again” and “Super Trouper” are asked for frequently to this day.

Max Raabe & Palast Orchester tour regularly to the USA and Canada where they give concerts in famous venues like Chicago Symphony Hall, Davies Hall in San Francisco and New York´s Carnegie Hall.

Over the years concert tours have also taken them to China, Japan, Italy, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Holland, France, England and most recently to Scandinavia and the Baltics. In 2010 a successful tour to Israel attracted a great deal of attention. A filmed documentation opened the Jewish Film Festival Berlin-Potsdam and was also shown at similar events in other cities, for instance at the Film Festival Jerusalem.