Listen ~ Regina Spektor

regina spektor !

Regina Spektor (b. February 18, 1980 in Moscow, Soviet Union (now Russia)), is a singer-songwriter and pianist. Born in Moscow, she moved with her family to the Bronx, New York, at age nine. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City's East Village.

Spektor comes from a musical family; her father, a photographer, was also an amateur violinist and her mother was a music professor in a Russian conservatory . The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, during the period of Perestroika when Jewish citizens were permitted to emigrate. Traveling first to Austria and then Italy, they finally settled in the Bronx, New York.

Regina Spektor is one of several artists, almost all coming out of New York’s East Village, to be labeled “anti-folk”–but with Spektor, expect a much more cabaret-y feel than the poster girl for anti-folk, Ani DiFranco. Spektor comes from a musical background and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, and it shows in her music–both in the arrangement (whether on piano or, particularly on this album, with other instruments) of the music and in the careful control underlying her singing voice.