Max Raabe Biography

Max Raabe is a German singer, born Matthias Otto, on December 12, 1962 in Lünen, North Rhine-Westphalia. He is best known as the founder and leader of the Palast Orchester.

Max Raabe Age

Max was born on 12th December 1962 in Lünen, Germany. He is 55 years old.

Max Raabe Wife

There is no record of Max ever being married at any point of his life.

Max Raabe Career

Raabe developed an interest in the sound of German dance and film music of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the songs of the Comedian Harmonists, from seeing old films on television and from his parents’ record collection. He formally studied music at the Berlin University of the Arts, intending originally to become a baritone opera singer. In 1985, he and eleven other students formed the Palast Orchester . The ensemble initially used music arrangements that Raabe found whilst shopping at various flea markets.

The orchestra worked for one year to learn these arrangements without any public engagements or performances. The orchestra first performed publicly at the 1987 Berlin Theaterball, in the lobby as a secondary act, but with such success that the audience left the ballroom to hear the orchestra’s performance in the lobby. Raabe and the Palast Orchester had a hit with his 1992 original, Schlager-styled song “Kein Schwein ruft mich an” (literal translation “No swine gives me a call”, meaning “No-one ever calls me”), a pop song in 1920s style.

Raabe writes original songs and music, including film music, in addition to covers of vintage music. He and the orchestra have also created covers of modern pop songs in a 1920–1930s band style, including songs by Britney Spears, Tom Jones, and Salt’n’Pepa. Raabe has also made a number of cameo appearances as a stereotypical 1920s and 1930s singer and entertainer in a number of films by German directors, such as Der bewegte Mann (1994; English title “Maybe, Maybe Not”), Werner Herzog’s Invincible (2001), and Wenzel Storch’s Die Reise ins Glück (2004). His live theatre performances have included a 1994 appearance as Dr. Siedler in the Berlin “Bar jeder Vernunft” version of The White Horse Inn, and 1999 performances as Mack the Knife in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera alongside Nina Hagen.

Raabe first performed in 2004, in the USA in Los Angeles . He performed his first concert in New York City’s Carnegie Hall in 2005, and returned for subsequent engagements with the Palast Orchester in 2007 and 2010. In 2011, Raabe produced an album, Küssen kann man nicht alleine (You cannot kiss alone), with former new-wave musician and producer Annette Humpe, who also wrote the lyrics. His latest album, also with Humpe, is Für Frauen ist das kein Problem (“It’s no problem for women”), released in 2013.

Max Raabe Songs

1. Für Frauen ist das kein Problem
2. Küssen kann man nicht alleine
3. Heute Nacht oder nie
4. Schlaflied
5. Ich bin nur wegen dir hier
6. Lasst mich rein, ich hör Musik
7. Wenn die Elisabeth
8. Ich bin nur gut, wenn keiner guckt
9. In der Bar zum Krokodil
10. Mir kann nichts passieren
11. One Cannot Kiss Alone
12. Doktor, Doktor
13. Kleine Lügen
14. Am Ende kommt immer der Schluss
15. Gib mir den letzten Abschiedskuss
16. Speak Low
17. Kein Schwein ruft mich an
18. Du bist meine Greta Garbo
19. Ich schlaf am besten neben dir
20. Am Amazonas
21. Unter einem Regenschirm am Abend
22. Song of Mandalay
23. What Good Would the Moon Be?
24. Das Nachtgespenst
25. Mir ist so morbide
26. Du passt auf mich auf
27. Rinderwahn
28. Top Secret Mission
29. Over My Shoulder
30. In geheimer Mission
31. Irgendwo auf der Welt
32. Nichts von Bedeutung

Max Raabe Albums

1. Eine Nacht in Berlin (Live)
2. Übers Meer
3. Klonen kann sich lohnen
4. Küssen kann man nicht alleine
5. Für Frauen ist das kein Problem
6. Charming Weill
7. Heute Nacht Oder Nie – Live in New York
8. Folge 4 – Original Live-Recording
9. One Cannot Kiss Alone
10. Rhino Hi-Five: Max Raabe & Palast Orchester
11. Folge 7 – Music, Maestro, Please
12. Der perfekte Moment… wird heut verpennt
13. Komm, laß uns einen kleinen Rumba tanzen (Japan Only)
14. Dort tanzt Lu-Lu
15. Golden Age
16. Kein Schwein ruft mich an – 50 große Erfolge
17. Max Raabe … singt
18. Das Beste vom Besten mit Max Raabe und noch viel mehr
19. Hitbox Vol.3
20. 30 Jahre Palast Orchester – Ich hör so gern Musik
21. Hitbox Vol.2
22. Laß uns von Liebe sprechen – 50 große Erfolge Vol.2

Max Raabe Video

Max Raabe News

Max Raabe and Palast Orchester revive forgotten era of German music

Updated On: 12th April 2018
Source: https://ottawacitizen.com

In a tuxedo and bowtie, his hair slicked back, Germany’s Max Raabe is no slouch when he’s on stage. For him, the music has to be perfect, too.

That’s why the well-coiffed crooner never travels without his Palast Orchester, an ensemble of a dozen classically trained musicians, most of whom play multiple instruments.

Their specialty is the music of the 1920s and ’30s, a pre-Nazi golden age in Germany when classical and popular music came together in one elegant, smooth-sounding package.

“The full sound makes things so glamourous,” said Raabe over the phone from Berlin. “You can’t recreate it with one trumpet and a saxophone. It’s wonderful to hear four saxophones and a trombone playing — it’s like seeing old black and white pictures from that period. Our orchestra sounds so authentic.”

Raabe, who’s in his 50s, discovered this forgotten era when he was 12. Instead of raiding his brother’s Rolling Stones albums, he dusted off an old 78 in his parents’ collection. “I was immediately touched by it,” Raabe recalls. “It was a funny and fast song, but there was a melancholy subnote that touched me. I had the feeling I was listening to another world, another time, so I collected more of these records.”

In 1985, while studying opera singing at the Berlin University for the Arts, Raabe decided to recruit his classmates to form a group that would specialize in this vintage material, reviving, for example, the music of Germany’s renowned Comedian Harmonists. The Palast Orchester was an immediate hit, and Raabe never did pursue a role in the opera world.

In addition to the lushness of the sound, part of the reason for the popularity of the music is the humour inherent in the lyrics. Double entendres and other forms of witty wordplay mark the songs, whether they’re performed in English or German. “People laugh at the exact same time they laughed 80 years ago because these lyrics are smart,” Raabe says.

The singer writes his own songs in the same style, usually with clever German lyrics, but they’ve also had one-off hits with Palast Orchester versions of pop songs like Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb, which went to the top of the charts in Italy, and Britney Spears’ Oops! … I Did It Again, which did well in Russia.

Riffing on a pop song is one tried-and-true way to appeal to the masses, but the core of the Palast repertoire has another thing going for it: Many people were inadvertently exposed to the music in their childhood, and it still resonates.

“If you watched Tom and Jerry cartoons, you always hear music like that so everybody is quite familiar with the repertoire,” Raabe explains. “Of course, they’re played by all the big bands in the United States. There’s a swing version of each song that we have, but we present them in their original version from 1929-31. It’s smooth but it’s not swing. We bring it in the original style of the early ’30s, which you can’t hear very often (played by) an orchestra of this size.”

Raabe and his orchestra members are frequent fliers, regularly performing 80 or 90 concerts per year for audiences of all ages around the world. Raabe first performed on his own in North America in the early 2000s, and returns with the orchestra almost every year. Next week’s concerts in Ottawa and Montreal will be part of their first visit to Eastern Canada.

Now in their third decade, with at least 20 recordings released, Raabe feels blessed that his singing hobby has turned into a career.

“I’m so thankful I can join the musicians each evening,” he said. “This is light and funny and elegant music, and you don’t have to understand each word to get the message and the feeling of the song. This music is quite familiar to everybody. You will be touched immediately.”