Regina Spektor Shares What to Expect From Her Upcoming Concerts on Broadway

In the middle of our conversation about her upcoming string of concerts on Broadway, Regina Spektor remembered she had an important question that she wanted to ask. "You're in theater," she said, interrupting her own thought. "Is it pronounced 'Lunt-Font-ann' or 'Lunt-Font-ayne'?"

"It's 'Font-ann,'" I answer. "OK, good," the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter replies. "I'm so excited to be there and I don't want to call it by the wrong name!"

Spektor's shows at the Lunt-Fontanne, running June 20-26 as part of this summer's In Residence series, are shaping up to be unlike anything her fans have experienced before. Her maiden voyage at the historic theater will offer a thorough examination of her whole catalogue, simultaneously reimagining beloved hits and reviving older tunes she only played a few times decades ago.

Though the Russian-born Spektor isn't expecting the concert to be a full-fledged musical, she is trying find a way to tie her songs together, as well as pay tribute to the rich history of the Lunt-Fontanne, the original home of a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic that happens to be one of her favorite movies. "I'm trying to create a moment where I pay homage to The Sound of Music in a grand way or a small way," she notes. "I can't just skip over that!"

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I know it's still early in the process, but what songs can people expect to hear in your shows at the Lunt-Fontanne?
I'm definitely going to play "Us" and "Samson" and "Fidelity," and maybe "Folding Chair" and "Blue Lips." There's a bunch of stuff off Soviet Kitsch. I might even play a couple of new songs. A lot of it is reimagined in a way that people haven't seen before. A few very special songs are becoming collaborations with dancers. I threw out some questions to the Internet community to find out which songs people want to hear, and it's been really interesting to see which had one or two requests, and which had lots of requests.

You've written so much music over the course of your career. How hard is it to narrow down the material?
Right now, my big problem is narrowing it down. I'm trying to create a show where there is a place for deep cuts. There are dozens of songs that I only played once or twice in 2002 that I only know now thanks to the kindness of strangers who used to tape my shows at bars and cafés and put it up on YouTube. So many of these old songs want to see the light of day — or…The stage light of night.

Many of your songs already have stories built into them. Are you trying to put them together to fit a narrative arc here?
It's funny; I see that more now that I'm working on it. It's not necessarily a narrative show, but as I've been putting it together, I'm like, "How did I never think of this before?" This makes so much sense with my music. I've been finding little threads that connect songs. The idea is to make it bespoke for the Lunt-Fontanne, but it creates the struggle of, "This might be a song that I really want to play, but what's gonna feel right for the show?" It's sort of like sequencing a record. I've put songs that I've loved so much into the bonus tracks of albums just because they didn't fit the whole.

What was your relationship to Broadway as you were growing up?
One of the things that I've realized is — and this might not even be real, but it is my hypothesis — in a lot of ways, I think immigrants tend to be outside of the Broadway bubble. The way that a lot of people get their love of Broadway is by their parents or grandparents taking them. It's a really expensive art form to follow, and the people that I knew who were really into Broadway, their families were affluent. They could go see Rent five times and get the cast recording, but it's absolutely cost prohibitive for most immigrant people. Right there, I'm cut out.

My parents were much more into classical music and jazz. Whenever we would have a chance to spend on something, they would take me to Carnegie Hall or to the Metropolitan Opera, or if there were a Russian theater troupe that would come through, we would go see The Cherry Orchard in Russian. The Broadway that I got into was mostly from movie musicals like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and Singin' in the Rain. I love the theater, but I don't necessarily click with that many musicals, really. I would take Verdi or Mozart over most musicals. I f*cking love Hamilton, but find me a person who doesn't. [laughs]