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” (meaning “not a single pig calls me”), 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 an even wider audience.

1997 Max Raabe & Palast Orchester celebrated their 10th anniversary in the sold out open air arena Waldbühne in Berlin.

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”, “Kiss” 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.

In the past, 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 much attention and was documented on film. "Max Raabe in Israel" opened the Jewish Film Festival Berlin-Potsdam 2011 and was also shown at similar events in other cities, for instance at the Film Festival Jerusalem.

Max Raabe & Palast Orchester have released a number of DVDs. These are live concert recordings from Berlin´s open air venue Waldbühne, Festspielhaus Baden Baden (the show “Palast Revue”) and Admiralspalast Berlin, an original theater from the 20s where “Heute Nacht oder nie” (Tonight Or Never) and “Eine Nacht in Berlin” (A Night In Berlin) were filmed. Most recently this fitting venue also set the scene for their 2016 production “Let´s Do It” which is currently running on US TV as one of the PBS pledge shows.

In February 2017 Max Raabe & Palast Orchester brought out their show "Das hat mir noch gefehlt" (Oh no, not that!). The title inspired them to initiate a public voting for which they put the more than 600 compositions of their repertoire online and asked fans to choose their favorites. The songs with the most votes found their way into the show.

In 2018 Max Raabe & Palast Orchester presented their show "Der perfekte Moment .. wird heut verpennt", named after the prior Max Raabe album from 2017.

In November 2019 the CD/DVD “Max Raabe & Palast Orchester MTV Unplugged” was released. For this special production Max Raabe & Palast Orchester had invited unusual guest artists like Herbert Grönemeyer, Lars Eidinger, Namika, Lea, Heavy Metal monster Mr Lordi, Pawel Popolski and rapper Samy Deluxe.

The current show of Max Raabe & Palast Orchester is „Guten Tag, liebes Glück“, again named after a popular Max Raabe song. Here, a mixture of well known and newly discovered 20s/30s originals are entertainingly interspersed with Max Raabe compositions.