Max Raabe

Known for his charismatic vocals, dry wit, and suave sophistication, Max Raabe has enjoyed enormous success as a singer, composer, and frontman of the Palast Orchester for more than three decades. The German baritone and his band specialise in recreating the cabaret music of Weimar Republic Berlin – songs of timeless musical elegance and snappy, often blackly humorous lyrics. “My aim is to transport people out of reality,” says Raabe. “This music was written to take its audience away from their everyday problems. And it still works today.” Born in Lünen, just north of Dortmund, in 1962, Raabe grew up listening to old dance tunes on the radio and watching Fred Astaire movies and footage of artists such as the Comedian Harmonists on TV. The chance discovery of a vintage recording of the song “Ich bin verrückt nach Hilde” in his parents’ home led him to start collecting both German and English 78s of the same era. Having sung in choirs as a child, he then went to Berlin’s Universität der Künste to train as an opera singer. In 1986, he founded the Palast Orchester with a group of fellow music students, using original arrangements unearthed in Berlin’s flea markets. Although the initial idea had simply been to make money to help fund their studies, their first public performance, in 1987, was such a success that the band stayed together and have continued to go from strength to strength. In 1992, they hit the German charts for the first time with “Kein Schwein ruft mich an”. Since then, their mix of meticulously researched period material and retro-sounding originals, together with the occasional cabaret take on tracks by artists such as Britney Spears, Tom Jones and others have brought Raabe and the Palast Orchester fame from Berlin to Tokyo, New York to Sydney. Their most recent album, MTV Unplugged, went gold in 2020. Alongside his international career with the band, Raabe has had success in acting roles on stage and screen, including appearances as Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera and as the MC in Werner Herzog’s Invincible. He also has a longstanding duo partnership with pianist Christoph Israel, a childhood friend with whom he has toured internationally and recorded the album Übers Meer. Raabe’s work has been recognised with numerous awards, including an Echo Klassik for his interpretation of Mack the Knife, the City of Lünen Cultural Prize, and the Order of Merit of Berlin.