Max Raabe

Max Raabe, frontman of the Palast Orchester, maintained a steadfast allegiance to the dance and film music of the 1920s and ’30s. Born in Lünen, Germany, he forged a distinctive approach inside that idiom by recasting contemporary hits, among them Britney Spears’s “Oops … I Did It Again,” into the vintage sonorities of pre-World War II European ballrooms. Onstage he also assumed leading parts in musical theater, notably the 1999 production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, where he appeared alongside Nina Hagen. The 2007 Carnegie Hall concert was issued by Raabe and the Palast Orchester in 2008 as the CD and DVD set Heute Nacht Oder Nie. Übers Meer arrived in 2010. Raabe next joined forces with Annette Humpe, the lead singer of the Neue Deutsche Welle band Ideal. Their first joint effort, Küssen Kann Man Nicht Alleine, appeared in 2011, with Humpe supplying the words and Raabe the music. The pair reconvened for 2013’s Für Frauen Ist das Kein Problem, which entered the German sales charts at number three. The live recording Eine Nacht in Berlin followed in 2014. In 2017 Raabe released Der Perfekte Moment... Wird Heut Verpennt, again featuring contributions from Annette Humpe and Peter Plat.