Tonight I attended a show put on by the Oregon Symphony (at the Schnitz): Max Raabe & Palast Orchester (more on them at Wikipedia).
Kelly organized a little ‘dress up’ event (involving local vintage clothing shops) to get as many people as possible to dress in 1920’s/1930’s outfits to attend the show. I played my part by buying a fedora, a tie (gasp!) and a new fancy trench-coat from a local haberdashery. There were about 30 of us that met at Nel Centro for some drinks before walking together to the Shnitz. We got lots of looks and smiles from other guests, and since we were instructed to wait until the last minute to walk to our seats our group even got a little bit of applause on our way to our seats. Pretty funny. Oh, the group was also taken backstage during the intermission to have a photo taken with Max.
The show itself was a lot of fun. Not only does Max Raabe himself have the perfect voice to perform these period tunes, the band was fantastic and fun to watch. A little over half of the songs were in German, one was in Spanish, and the rest in English. While I didn’t recognize most of the songs it didn’t matter because the music was great, Max’s banter between songs was hilarious, and the crowd were loving it. A thoroughly enjoyable evening.
Here’s a little sample (performing ‘Cheek to Cheek’). Fun stuff.