Regina Spektor - Refugee from Soviet kitsch

Regina Spektor's family fled Moscow for the United States but, she tells Fiona Sturges, it was a conversation on an Israeli mountain that began her transition to New York alt-folk darling.

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While she grew up in the Soviet Union, writing pop songs was a long way from Spektor's mind. From birth she was in training as a concert pianist, and played a Petrof piano handed down from her great grandfather. The family lived a comfortable life in Moscow – her father worked as a photographer and her mother was a music professor. But in 1989, nine-year-old Spektor emigrated to the United States along with her parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and set up home in the Bronx. Their passports were destroyed by border security, ensuring they could never return home. "It was pretty intimidating," Spektor recalls. "Even then it was seen as a real betrayal to leave."
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Having left her beloved Petrof behind, she practiced piano on an out-of-tune upright in the basement of the local synagogue until her father befriended a Manhattan music professor. His wife was a Peruvian pianist and she agreed to give Regina lessons.
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Whole article HERE