[Dixielandjazz] Interview on NPR with Max Raabe's Palast Orchester

[David Richoux]

Just heard this on my local NPR station - I missed their show in  
Oakland yesterday, but I do have a lot of their recordings - on the  
fringes of OKOM?

Dave Richoux

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95832689

All Things Considered, October 19, 2008 - When musician and acclaimed  
baritone Max Raabe arrived in Berlin in the mid-'80s, he was  
expecting to find the cabarets and variety theaters his grandmother  
told him about, but they were long gone. So he decided to create his  
own orchestra, dedicated to performing the elegant dance hits of the  
'20s and '30s in their original arrangements. NPR's Jackie Lyden  
spoke with Raabe before a performance at Lisner Auditorium in  
Washington, D.C.

Founded in 1986 by Raabe, the 13-piece Palast Orchester has become  
world-renowned for its precise and charismatic interpretations, which  
incorporate early jazz, ragtime, and German and American standards.  
After more than 20 years together, Palast Orchester has built up its  
repertoire to include more than 400 works, including classics such as  
"I'll Kiss Your Hand, Dear Lady" and "You're the Cream in My Coffee."

"There's a humor, a timeless humor in these pieces, and a timeless  
elegance," Raabe says. "So for me, it's not a question of nostalgia  
to bring these songs; it's a kind of humor, of entertaining. The most  
elegant pop music we ever had. And if there is a funny song,  
everybody gets the jokes, the spirit of the song, immediately. You  
don't have to explain anything. It still works, and this is one of  
the many reasons to bring this onstage in our times. In a modern  
time, in a wild time, there is an elegance on the stage that you  
don't find anywhere nowadays."

The ensemble's latest recording, Heute Nacht Oder Nie (Tonight or  
Never), features Raabe's superb singing voice, an extensive baritone  
that can hit the highs well into the tenor's range and drop down to  
low bass. He sings in a style that hasn't been heard live since WWII:  
Raabe sounds like Jimmy Dorsey or Paul Whiteman come back to life.  
He's rail-thin and elegant in a white tie and tails.

In a real sense, the 46-year-old singer has been training for this  
all his life. He sang in a choir as a boy in Westphalia, and on  
Sunday afternoons, he watched old black-and-white films on television.

"Everybody was singing in these films," Raabe says, "and so I was  
quite familiar with this repertoire. My grandmother always told me  
about these big varieties and dance bands and orchestras, and so I  
expected [them] when I came to Berlin, and there wasn't. And I  
thought, 'Berlin needs an orchestra like this.' And so I asked some  
students, friends of mine, because I had found some original stock  
arrangements, and so it starts."

Some of Raabe's most popular songs were originally performed by the  
Comedian Harmonists, which you might call the first boy band. The  
group's close harmonies were astronomically popular in the '20s and  
'30s, but by 1934, they had split up. The Jewish members were forced  
to flee Germany.

"The war ended that," Raabe says, "and the Germans by themselves  
ended it. Because when Adolf Hitler came to power, this kind of  
irony, this kind of elegance, this kind of lifestyle was gone. There  
was no place for irony, and most of our repertoire was written by  
Jewish composers. We lost this. It's a shame."