Regina Spektor, 37, is an indie-pop singer-songwriter and pianist whose song “You’ve Got Time” is the theme for the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black.” Her most recent album is “Remember Us to Life” (Sire.). She currently is on a solo U.S. tour. She spoke with Marc Myers.
I smile a lot. I can’t help it. I come from smiley people. Both of my parents are happy and smiley, and it rubbed off. We’re originally from Russia, where people don’t smile as much as in the States, so we stood out there.
I was born in Moscow in 1980. My parents and I lived on the outskirts of the city in a typical five-story concrete building. Ours was painted yellow instead of the typical white. The color made it easy for friends to find us when they visited for the first time.
We lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the first floor. My parents gave me the bedroom. They slept on a foldout couch.
My room faced the street, making it easy to sneak out. I’d open the window and bigger boys could lift me out. We’d play in what we called “the woods,” but it really was a small park in the center of our apartment complex.
Living in Russia in the 1980s, we faced our share of anti-Semitism. I remember a boy bit my leg in preschool. He was mad about something and told me to go back to Israel.
I didn’t know what Israel was then, but I knew I was Jewish. Everyone seemed to know who was Jewish. The way I chose to deal with it was to be defiant. I became proud of who I was.
I began studying classical piano at age 7. My piano was my most favorite thing in the world. It was a little brown upright Petrof that my grandfather had given my mother when she entered the conservatory at 16.
In 1988, I began to overhear my parents talk about leaving the Soviet Union. HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Service) was going to help us resettle in the U.S. along with thousands of other Soviet Jews.
I was scared until I heard that my cousin Marsha was leaving with her family, too. Marsha has always been my best friend. We’re like twins from other mothers.
Before my family left, we had to give away or sell all of our things. A man bought my piano. I was heartbroken.
We lived in Vienna for several weeks in one room. Next, we spent two months in Ladispoli, Italy. When we finally arrived in New York in the summer of ’89, we stayed with relatives in their big house in New City, N.Y. They had left the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
Soon, my parents found an apartment in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. We lived on the fourth floor of a five-story walk-up that was roach-infested.
Fortunately, Marsha lived across the hall, so we were always together. We were on food stamps then and there was a lot of stress. When my brother, Boruch, was born, we had to carry him up and down with the stroller.
A couple of years later, we moved to a street parallel to ours. The building was an upgrade and a downgrade. We had an elevator, but now we had mice and roaches.
Learning English was hard at first. Marsha had arrived in New York a little earlier than me, so by the time I showed up she knew the words “sneakers” and “garbage.” I was so impressed.
We both were given full scholarships to SAR Academy, a Jewish school in the Riverdale section.
My father, Ilya, had been a photographer and found a job at a Manhattan commercial photo lab. My mother, Bella, had been a conservatory professor in Moscow. She went back to college for her Master of Arts in teaching music, and took a job at a public school.
When I was 12, we moved to a nearby low-income co-op for teachers. That building was much nicer.
At 16, in 1996, I received a scholarship from the UJA Federation and the Nesiya Institute to spend the summer in Israel as part of its arts program. That was a life-changing trip.
Other teenagers in the program turned me on to music by Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell. They also encouraged me to sing and write my own songs. I couldn’t believe it. I had grown up listening to male artists.
I never had singing lessons. As a result I hurt my voice when I started performing. Eventually I had voice lessons.
Today, I live with my husband, Jack, and our son in a Manhattan apartment with a beautiful view. Marsha is a pediatric neuropsychologist. We still talk all the time.
My most precious possessions are boxes of my father’s photos and film. One of my favorites is a 8mm film of my mom, pregnant with me in Moscow, standing next to her sister, Roza, who’s pregnant with Marsha.
In July 2012, I returned to Russia for the first time to perform. I would have tried to track down my old piano, but after 20 years, I had no idea where to start looking.
F.T ISLAND JOURNEY 