Regina Spektor is an American singer/songwriter whose music is associated with the anti-folk scene based out of New York City’s East Village. Born and raised in Moscow until she was nine, Spektor spent her childhood listening to her father’s bootleg tapes of Western pop and rock music and learning to play the piano. Later, Spektor and her family would move to the Bronx where they would be the first Russian family in the borough in 20 years.
She continued to take classical piano lessons at the SUNY Music Conservatory where she was introduced to blues and jazz artists like Billie Holiday. These genres would be a signature sound on her self-released 2001 debut album, 11:11. Spektor spent a lot of her time playing gigs around New York City. In 2002, she released her second album, Songs, an album that grabbed the attention of They Might Be Giants’ drummer, Alan Bezozi. He would introduce Spektor to the Strokes’ producer Gordon Raphael, and they would both work with Spektor on her third album, Soviet Kitsch—first self-released like her previous albums, but it would eventually receive a wider release with Sire Records.
Regina Spektor became more well known because of tours with the Strokes, Kings of Leon, and the Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson. In 2006, she released Begin to Hope, an album that went gold in America. Begin to Hope was followed by 2009′s Far, which debuted at #3 on the Billboard Top 200. In 2012, Regina Spektor released her sixth album, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats.
