Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor was born in Moscow, USSR to a musical Jewish family. Her father, Ilya Spektor, is a photographer and violinist. Her mother, Bella Spektor, was a music professor in a Russian college of music and now teaches at a public elementary school in New York. Spektor learned how to play piano by practicing on a Petrof upright that was given to her mother by her grandfather. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989 due to the ethnic and political discrimination which Jews faced; Regina was nine and had to leave her piano behind.The family settled in the Bronx, New York, where Spektor graduated in Fair Lawn public high school. She gradually achieved recognition through performances in the anti-folk scene in downtown New York City, most importantly at the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe. She sold self-produced CDs at her performances during this period: 11:11 (2001) and Songs (2002). Her other album Soviet Kitsch (2004) was also self produced but Sire and Shoplifter Records help produce