Regina Spektor | Artist
Regina Ilyinichna Spektor is a Russian-American singer, songwriter, and pianist born 1980 in Moscow. Born to a musical Russian-Jewish family, her father was a photographer and amateur violinist, and her mother was a music professor in a Soviet college of music. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989 when Spektor was nine and a half, during the period of Peretroika when Soviet citizens were permitted to emigrate. They entered the USA as refugees and settled in the Bronx, New York, where Regina attended high school then studied classical piano with Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. Spektor was originally interested in classical music only, but she later grew interested in hip hop, rock, and punk, but it was her exposure to the works of Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco and other singer-songwriters, which encouraged her belief that she could create her own songs. She wrote her first a cappella songs around the age of 16 and her first songs for voice and piano when she was 17. Spektor then attended the studio composition program at the Purchase College NY Conservatory of Music, earning her keep in the holidays by working at a butterfly farm in Luck, Wisconsin. She completed the four year program in three years, graduating with honours in 2001. Spektor gradually achieved recognition through performances in the anti-folk scene in downtown New York City, most prominently at the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe. Her first nationwide tour was supporting The Strokes on their 2003–2004 Room on Fire tour after which Kings of Leon, who were also on the tour, invited Spektor to open for them on their own European tour. In 2004 she signed a contract with Sire Records for her third album Soviet Kitsch, which became her career breakthrough. The artist has gone on to release eight studio albums to date, and become a renowned performer worldwide. Standout albums include Soviet Kitsch, Begin to Hope, Home Before and After, and Live in London from 2010. Mayor Bill de Blasio proclaimed June 11, 2019, Regina Spektor Day in New York City.
Artist Website: reginaspektor.com
Featured Albums: Regina Spektor
Video Clips: Samson, Us, You've Got Time
