Regina Spektor

As Secondborn and I quietly sang 'breaking my hea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eart' together at the bus stop for Oxford, a guy with a smile as benign as ours said, 'You were there too.'

How did Regina Spektor manage to make a sold-out Royal Festival Hall feel as if we'd just spent the evening with a small group of really good friends? I doubt anyone left her gentle, generous gig without smiling. She made mistakes, laughed, not a big deal, and said that she kind of felt she was giving us permission to make mistakes too. But she also sang and played superbly, her paradoxically elfin but rich voice easily carrying to us at the back of the hall, with her words, sometimes whimsical, sometimes profound, being mouthed by everyone I could see, and her syncopated rhythms clapped or tapped out in what was almost a communal dance.

She has damaged her back and can't sit for long at the piano. So she got us all to stand and join in her back exercises before she stood at the microphone and sang a capella. Nor can she play her guitar at the moment so Leo Abrams, producer on her latest album, came and played it for her. Did it feel as if we'd missed out? Not one bit.

She moved between playing songs from her recent albums and songs from our pasts, weaving history and present together; she sang for Ukraine and she ended by giving us permission to join in the ones we've always sung along to.

I heard several people on the way out say what a very lovely gig it had been. Absolutely, and somehow she had conjured all the saccharine out of that word.

Her Tiny Desk concert