Regina Ilyinichna Spektor is a Russian-American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Spektor was born in 1980 in Moscow, Soviet Union, to a musical Russian-Jewish family. Her father, Ilya Spektor, is a photographer and amateur violinist. Her mother, Bella Spektor, was a music professor in a Soviet college of music and teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York. Spektor has a brother, Boruch (also known as Bear). Growing up in Moscow, Regina started taking piano lessons when she was seven and learned how to play the piano by p…