Regina Spektor life and biography

Regina Spektor is a well known indie-folk female singer, born in Moscow and which moved to the United States when she was nine. Spektor studied classical piano from the age of six, practising 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.

Since emerging on the NYC café circuit in 2001, this Russian-born, Bronx-bred artist has been hailed as a truly special talent. With an uninhibited imagination and acute sense of detail both in music and words, Regina Spektor has gone from practicing on an out of tune piano in the basement of her local synagogue to hypnotizing small crowds in NYC's lower East Side to selling out venues like New York's Radio City Music Hall worldwide. Continuing to showcase her amazing ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary with her unique and provocative vocal style and prodigious piano skills garnered through years of classical training, Spektor recently released her latest album "far," to an overwhelming response from both fans and critics and it debuted at #3 on the Billboard Top 200.

The New York Times raves "far" is "[Spektor's] most ambitious work sonically and her storytelling is as elliptical as ever", while The UK Sunday Times agrees this is "her most accomplished, mystifying, eclectic and beautiful release to date. It doesn't just fly, it soars." "Far" is the follow up to Spektor's breakthrough album "Begin To Hope" which actually spent 5 successful weeks in a row at #1 on the Billboard new artists chart before moving to #20 on the Billboard Top 100 and selling 1 million copies worldwide (Gold or Platinum in 7 countries).

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. 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's first nationwide tour was accompanying The Strokes as the opening act on their 2003–2004 Room on Fire tour, during which she and the band performed and recorded "Modern Girls & Old Fashion Men". Kings of Leon were the second opening act on that tour, and they invited Regina to open for them on their own European tour right after The Strokes tour. In June 2005, Spektor was the opening act for the English piano rock band Keane on their North American tour, during which she performed at Radio City Music Hall on June 7, 2005. During her 2006 headlining tour in support of the Begin to Hope album, Spektor sold out a performance at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, and two shows at Town Hall Theater in New York City on September 27 and September 28, 2006.

"Small Town Moon" 2012 single:



Albums

2001: 11:11
2002: Songs
2004: Soviet Kitsch
2006: Begin to Hope
2009: Far
2012: What We Saw from the Cheap Seats

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