Our girl Regina Spektor did a great interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air about emigrating to the United States from the former Soviet Union, and taking her first trip back to Russia this summer. Spektor is delightfully articulate and thoughtful, sharing her method of writing as well as some of her tougher memories from the old country.

Gross refers to Spektor as a muscular piano player, which Spektor admits is not always preferred in classical music. “Sometimes the way that I need to play the instrument, it gets so loud that the strings reverberate in a certain way,” she explains, adding that she’s had run-ins with piano tuners who think otherwise. “They get kind of argumentative with me, and they’re like, ‘you’re not supposed to play this loud.’ I tell them I have to play how I play.”

Listen to the full interview here, and Spektor’s new album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, here.

The post Regina Spektor Opens Up About Life in the Former Soviet Union appeared first on Jewcy.

From the Times profile:

Spektor had been attending Orthodox yeshivas since the family immigrated: first, Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy, and then the Frisch School, in Paramus, N.J. The summer before her junior year, her piano studies on the wane (“By the end of Frisch, I was already doing a lot less with Sonia. It sort of just trailed off”), Spektor went to Israel with Marsha and other Jewish kids. There, she earned a reputation for making up songs while on hikes. When she returned, Marsha transferred from their yeshiva to high school in Fair Lawn, N.J. Spektor was alone and miserable. Into that void, her new friends from the Israel trip sent cassettes: Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos. Spektor composed her first songs, making bedroom boombox tapes for friends.

NPR is streaming the entire album (out May 29), and we strongly recommend a listen.

(Photo credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

The post Listen to Regina Spektor’s New Album, ‘What We Saw from the Cheap Seats’ appeared first on Jewcy.