With his slicked-back hair, arched eyebrows and string-bean frame filling out an elegant white-tie tuxedo, singer Max Raabe looks like he just stepped out of a Fred Astaire film. And when this German high baritone croons tunes accompanied by the similarly attired 12-member Palast Orchester (Palace Orchestra), Raabe and company look and sound like a modern-day reincarnation of a 1920s dance band.

The retro art deco sound of Berlin-based Raabe and the Palast Orchester come to Aurora's Paramount Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 4, as part of a three-week American tour. With a sold-out engagement at New York's Carnegie Hall in 2007 and previous tour stops in Paris, Shanghai, Vienna, Tokyo and Moscow (among many others), it's unusual that such a cosmopolitan act like Raabe and the Palast would eschew Chicago for suburban Aurora.

According to Paramount Theatre executive director Diana Martinez, Raabe and the Palast were originally set to make their area debut at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, but there was a scheduling conflict.

"I thought, 'Here comes the big sell,'" remembers an initially nonplused Martinez when a desperate booking agent offered up Raabe and the Palast for the Paramount. "He thought about us because we have such a pretty, historic landmark theater and he knew we had great acoustics."

Martinez was wary, but after some research she realized that the offer of Raabe and the Palast's big-band sound was one she couldn't pass up.

"I thought they would appeal to an older crowd, but I was corrected by German Americans who have told me, 'No, no, young people love them, too,'" Martinez said, comparing Raabe and the Palast's crossover popularity to Canadian crooner Michael Bublé.

Raabe and the Palast have built up an acclaimed international reputation due to their sophistication at recreating the elegant sound of dance band music from the 1920s to '40s. Many of Raabe and the Palast's live concerts are available on CD, while their 2000 studio recording focusing on German-American composer Kurt Weill called "Charming Weill" (titled "Life, Love & Laughter" in the U.S.) became a best-seller in Europe.

"The music has a special charm and elegance," said Raabe about German cabaret and dance-hall music of the era, adding that the lyrics matched the sophistication of American tunesmith Cole Porter. "You're singing about love, but there's a bitter subtext and black humor and double meanings."

The members of the Palast do an amazing amount of historical research, scouring flea markets and bookstore basements across Europe and America to find original sheet music arrangements or shellac 78 records from the era.

In many cases, the sheet music to old records can't be found. To get around this, Raabe and the Palast employ the services of an 89-year-old orchestrator named Günther Gürsch, who has created new arrangements tailored exclusively for the band during the past decade.

"(Gürsch) is very old, but his ears are top quality and he handles this material in a serious and good way," Raabe said. "He's an important part of our orchestra."

Yet Raabe and company aren't adverse to sexing up their repertoire with pop music of today. It's quite an odd and ultimately enlightening experience to hear Raabe croon his way through Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did it Again" or Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb," done up in jazzy big-band arrangements and sung with the ironic panache of German cabaret singers.

Raabe is the driving force behind the Palast, which was founded in 1986. While his peers were heavily into punk music, Raabe sought out other college-age aficionados who were similarly obsessed with the music of old Hollywood and the legendary cabaret heights of Weimar Republic Germany.

Pianist Ian Wekwerth was originally studying to be an aeronautical engineer in college. But Raabe roped him into the Palast during its formative years, and Wekwerth has been playing with them ever since.

According to Wekwerth, Raabe's suave and droll onstage persona matches his own in real life.

"He comes from that time, in a way, not being nostalgic, but his whole way of behaving," said Wekwerth, noting Raabe's ultra polite demeanor and the fact that he almost never sees Raabe in jeans, but mostly in suits. "Max is also very style conscious and when it comes to the musical aspect, and we really rely on his taste" for concert programming.

Worldwide, audiences and critics have been easily won over.

"Mr. Raabe comes across as a wised-up adult choirboy with a slightly seductive glint in his eye," wrote New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini about Raabe and the Palast's 2007 Carnegie Hall engagement. "Like Fred Astaire, he can croon his way to tenorial highs or dip to playfully earthy basso lows. But there is not a trace of sentimentality in his singing, not a slice of ham, even when he is having fun."

While Raabe and Palast perform mostly in German-speaking countries, they go out of their way to also perform a few songs in the language of where they're playing. And when Raabe does sing in German, he explains the context of the song in English introductions with a very wry sense of humor (Raabe says their current concert tour is based upon their Carnegie Hall concert, figures it's about half English and half German).

Raabe's banter also don't whitewash the fact that Germany's international music standing in the world fizzled out in the 1930s. That's when some of the best Weimar era-composers and lyricist (many of them Jewish) were forced to flee or were persecuted when the Nazis came to power.

Yet Raabe is also careful not to turn the concert into a history lesson. "We want to entertain an audience since everyone knows which period these songs were written," Raabe said.

Since Raabe and the Palast are largely unknown quantities in the United States, they're keeping their expectations fairly modest for their American tour.

"We do realize that for a group that comes over from Europe, you need a while to adjust to the commodities of the American market," Wekwerth said. "If you play Carnegie Hall in New York and you're successful, it doesn't mean that everyone in the country hears about it. We're just going to be patient and keep on playing and playing."

Despite that uncertainty, Raabe and the members of the Palast are really looking forward to their American tour largely due to the fact that they're playing in so many restored art deco movie palaces like Aurora's Paramount Theatre.

"We played the Fox Theatre in Atlanta once and that's where Tommy Dorsey used to play," Wekwerth said. "I don't know what it is, but the spirit is there and the orchestra sounds so great and we looked perfect in the surroundings - everything seems to match."

-- by Scott Morgan