Max Raabe

Matthias Otto (December 12, 1962) is a German jazz singer who performs under the stage name Max Raabe. Born in the city of Lünen in West Germany, he developed an interest in the music of German films from the 1920s and 1930s at a very young age, citing Kurt Weill and the Comedian Harmonists as some of his earliest influences. After studying to become a baritone opera singer at the Berlin University of the Arts, he formed the Palast Orchester in 1985. The group scored its first with the 1992 Raabe original "Kein Schwein ruft mich an," a schlager-tinged song styled inspired by 1920s music. For the remainder of the decade, Max Raabe and company tackled some of the most famous pop songs in the world, putting their unique spin on tracks by Britney Spears, Tom Jones, and Salt'n'Pepa. In 1999, the singer appeared alongside Nina Hagen in a production of Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera. During the early aughts, Palast Orchester gave their first couple of shows in the US, including a 2005 performance at New York City's Carnegie Hall. In 2011, Max Raabe produced the LP Küssen kann man nicht alleine with Neue Deutsche Welle singer Annette Humpe, kicking off a fruitfuil creative partnership that continued on albums like Für Frauen ist das kein Problem (2013) and Der perfekte Moment... wird heut verpennt (2017).