Regina Spektor

Since emerging on the NYC café circuit in 2001, Regina Spektor has been hailed as a truly special talent. Her new album Soviet Kitsch offers ample proof of the Russian-born, Bronx-bred musician's many remarkable gifts, from her unique and provocative vocal style to prodigious piano skills garnered through years of classical training. Spektor is an enormously idiosyncratic composer and lyricist, combining eclectic and evocative melodies with intricately structured character studies that owe more to Chekhov and Gogol than to most modern songwriters. With Soviet Kitsch, Regina Spektor establishes herself as something genuinely rare and refreshing -- an unadulterated, unanticipated original.

Spektor was born in Moscow, back in the days before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The only daughter of a musically inclined family -- her mother taught music, while her dad was a violinist and a photographer -- young Regina began her piano lessons at 6, studying and practicing on a Petrof piano given to her mother by her grandfather.

In 1989, soon after Mikhail Gorbachev began his policy of perestroika, she and her parents immigrated to the Bronx, New York City. While leaving the Soviet Union was cause for celebration, it was understood that once the Spektors arrived in America, Regina would no longer be able to study music.

She tried to maintain her musical chops by playing on an out of tune piano in the basement of their local synagogue, but most often practiced on windowsills and tabletops. One fortuitous evening, her father struck up a conversation on the subway with a professional concert violinist by the name of Samuel Marder. Marder invited the Spektors to his Riverdale house to hear him and his wife, Manhattan School of Music professor Sonia Vargas, play a private recital.

Spektor attended yeshiva on a scholarship, but always felt out of place." After two years, she opted to leave yeshiva and attend a secular high school in Fairlawn, New Jersey

Spektor completed her studies at Purchase in three years, overloading on classes in order to save money. Meanwhile, she began playing her first gigs, drawing a local following for her increasingly powerful material. She was also a favorite among the Purchase musical community, and in early 2001, Regina teamed up with jazz bassist Chris Kuffner to record her first collection of songs, dubbed 11:11. She did an initial run of a thousand copies, which she sold at gigs as a way of supplementing her limited income.

After wrapping the sessions, Raphael played Soviet Kitsch to the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, who was so impressed he invited Regina to join his band on their sold-out North American tour. Since she was still an unsigned artist, Spektor had to cover all of her own expenses, from cross- country airfares to nightly hotel stays. Spektor reckons the experience to have been well worth the cost.