Regina Spektor was born on February 18th, 1980, in Moscow, Soviet Union, to a musical family. Her father, a photographer, was also an amateur violinist. Her mother was a music professor in a Russian conservatory and now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York. Spektor studied classical piano from the age of six, practicing on a Petrof piano given to her mother by her grandfather. She was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine, during the period of Perestroika when Jewish citizens were permitted to emigrate. The seriousness of her piano studies led her parents to consider not leaving Russia, but they finally decided to emigrate, for religious and political reasons. Traveling first to Austria and then Italy, the family settled in the Bronx, New York, where Spektor graduated from a middle school yeshiva. She then attended the Frisch Yeshiva High School in Paramus, New Jersey on a scholarship for two years, but, feeling out of place, eventually transferred to a secular public school, Fair Lawn High School, in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where she finished the last two years of her high school career. Spektor has stated that she was originally interested only in classical music, but that she later became interested in pop, rock, and punk as well. Beginnings as a songwriter In New York, Spektor gained a firm grounding in classical music from her piano teacher, Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. Spektor studied with Vargas???whom Spektor's father had met through violinist Samuel Marder, Vargas's husband???until she was 17. Although the family had been unable to bring their piano with them from Russia, Spektor found a piano on which to practice in the basement of her synagogue, also utilizing
1 | Firewood | What We Saw From The Cheap Seats |
2 | Human of the Year | Far |
3 | Somedays | Soviet Kitsch |
4 | * * * (Whisper) | Soviet Kitsch |
5 | Man of A Thousand Faces | Far |
6 | Apres Moi | Begin To Hope |
7 | On The Radio | Begin To Hope |
8 | Marry Ann | 11:11 |
9 | Your Honor | Soviet Kitsch |
10 | Lady | Begin To Hope |
11 | Braille | 11:11 |
12 | Us | Soviet Kitsch |
13 | Patron Saint | What We Saw From The Cheap Seats |
14 | Love Affair | 11:11 |
15 | Lounge | Songs |
16 | Rejazz | 11:11 |
17 | Oedipus | Songs |
18 | Genius Next Door | Far |
19 | Fidelity | Begin To Hope |
20 | Flyin | 11:11 |