Acclaimed Singer-Song Writer Regina Spektor ’01

A celebrated Indie singer-songwriter and pianist, graduated cum laude from the Conservatory of Music (studio composition program) in 2001. She had emigrated with her family to New York City from the Soviet Union nine years earlier as religious and political refugees.
 
She graduated with a bachelor of music in studio composition, and established herself as a pure and unique voice in music by merging early classical piano training with an affinity for pop, jazz, soul, and independent rock styles.
 
In a songwriting class during her freshman year, her first original song assignment greatly impressed the class of 80 students, foretelling the gifted musician developing in our midst. During her senior year, Spektor self-published her first CD 11:11 and by 2003, she was touring nationally and internationally as the opening act for The Strokes and Kings of Leon.
 
Spektor signed with Sire Records in 2004, upon release of her third of now seven studio albums, entitled Soviet Kitsch; her fourth album in 2006, Begin to Hope, went Gold peaking at number 20 on the Billboard 200, and was nominated for the Short List Music Prize; and All The Rowboats, a video of a single from her sixth album What We Saw From The Cheap Seats was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award.
 
Spektor has performed in some of the world’s most acclaimed venues, including the White House, Radio City Music Hall, the music festivals Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, London’s Hyde Park and Royal Albert Hall, and Sydney’s Opera House; on television shows like Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live, and most importantly at our Performing Arts Center, where, in 2007, she gave a benefit concert for our students,
 
She writes and performs original music for numerous films, television shows and commercials, most notably your original “You’ve Got Time” theme song for the Netflix show Orange is the New Black, nominated in 2014 for a Grammy award, and winner of the Broadcast Music Streaming Media Award for the last four years in a row.
 
In May, 2017, Spektor was honored with  the Purchase College President’s Award for Distinguished Alumni.