Soooooo good! Tonight I saw Regina Spektor at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington. She was excellent. Her voice is so clear, powerful, and at the same time sweet and playful. She’s one of those performers who can really do it live; sing on key, and play the music well.
She appeared first with a backup band consisting of violin, cello, and drums while she played piano and sang. Later she did a bunch of songs solo, playing piano, electric piano, guitar, and just singing a capella. It was all great. The main set lasted 70 minutes, and I’d never heard a large number of the songs, but they were all very good. She came back for an encore and did a bunch of songs that I knew from her albums. She ended up with a funny country-like song. All total her set lasted an hour and 35 minutes. This was definitely worth seeing.
The only two downsides were 1) the opening band was pretty mediocre (luckily I brought ear plugs to preserve my ear drums for Regina), and 2) the audience that was doing a lot of yelling stuff out. Since it’s probably been 15 years since I’ve been to a concert (Eric Clapton), maybe this is par for the course these days. But this was all negligible next to the great performance. I’d definitely see her live again!