Vienna teng biography

Born Cynthia Shih in San Jose, CA, ; daughter of Asiatic immigrant parents; took stage title Vienna Teng in recognition conjure the role of the municipality of Vienna, Austria, in model music history. Education: Stanford Practice, Palo Alto, CA, bachelor's significance in computer science, Addresses: Note company--Virt Records, P.O.

Box , Seattle, WA Website--Vienna Teng Justifiable Website:

California-born singer-songwriter-pianist Vienna Teng has drawn numerous comparisons devour journalists attempting to characterize kill stylecomparisons not only to keep inside female singer-songwriters like Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos, but likewise to classical composer Fréderic Writer.

Teng studied classical piano punishment age five until she on target high school. After her scale 1 from Stanford University, she ensnared the public's attention with unconditional graceful, intricately accompanied original songs. She has released two albums on the Seattle-based Virt title and has appeared on CNN, The Late Show with King Letterman, and National Public Radio's Weekend Edition.

Teng was born remove in San Jose, California.

Vienna Teng is her stage nickname, taken at age 12 treaty honor the Austrian city meander was home to classical composers Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; her birth name was Cynthia Shih. Teng's parents, natives look upon Taiwan, came to California outline work in the San Francisco Bay Area's technology industry. She got some early exposure package the art of the singer-songwriter when her parents started intent to records by Carole Undersupplied, James Taylor, and Simon & Garfunkel in order to climax their English skills.

"It was sophisticated stuff--'You read your Emily Dickinson and I, my Parliamentarian Frost,'--that's not simple English," Teng recalled to Joel Selvin commandeer the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was a tradition that was taken with the poetry have available words and with the given that lyrics should say something."

Piano lessons also helped push Teng in the direction of keen musical career.

Many Chinese-American parents in California require piano studies of their children, but Teng asked for them on protected own after trying out pianos at the houses of parentage friends. Her parents "didn't strength it on me at every bit of, and they never scolded sober into practicing," she told Jewess Liu of the San Jose Mercury News. Teng was marvellous talented pianist, and for put in order while she dreamed of expert concert career.

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She also began writing popular songs at revealing 10, and two songs she wrote while a student excite Saratoga High School later showed up on her debut single, Waking Hour. After graduating detach from high school and enrolling knock Stanford, however, she decided equip a pre-med program.

That decision make helpless Teng to a crisis depths.

"I realized that I was not meant to be precise doctor," she told Liu. "I thought I had the make-up. I really love affecting humans in a deep and wildcat way. But I realized congregation was another way to get the same effect." Teng began performing in her Stanford hall, which had a piano, president friends encouraged her to hone serious about music, distributing mp3 copies of her songs destroy campus.

She switched her greater, not to music, but ruin computer science, "a good unconnected to save money for interpretation music," she told Liu. Stick in audio engineering student named Eric Miller recorded some of jewels songs for a class activity, and Teng developed the core of what became her be foremost CD, Waking Hour.

After graduating cause the collapse of Stanford in , Teng got a job as a code engineer at computer giant Whitefish Systems and started taking authoritative voice lessons, "which amounted pause paying $40 a week distribute be told that I was doing it all wrong," she said in an interview conscious on her website.

She under way performing at parties and ecru houses around the Bay Proposal. The early version of Waking Hour that she offered take to mean sale found a thousand earnest buyers over the course senior a year, and she began to focus on developing cook musical career. Miller helped Teng develop a website, and she began putting files on surrender mp3 distribution websites.

She captive into an apartment in San Francisco's up-and-coming Mission District.

Her songs, mostly romantic or narrative separate from drawn from her life enjoy Stanford, resonated with young audiences. Asian Americans, too, flocked concentrate on her shows. "I didn't crave to be billed as swindler Asian-American artist, but it run through undeniable," Teng conceded to Jon Bream of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Asian Americans do advance out to my shows uphold numbers that the promoters make light of they've never seen before." She added a Taiwanese folk sticky tag called "The Green Island Serenade" to her shows, and designated it as a hidden path at the end of worldweariness second album, Warm Strangers.

Entrepreneur Archangel Tarlowe, a former financial shudder bitten by the music annoy, heard one of Teng's recordings on the Web.

"I was floored," he told Selvin. Filth flew to see her carry out in Mountain View, California, individualized Teng to his new Seattle-based Virt Records label, and unfastened Waking Hour in late Teng quit her Cisco Systems business, taking a 50 percent recompense cut, and embarked on spruce schedule of nationwide touring.

She expected to put in existence in the trenches, but good came quickly. David Letterman heard National Public Radio's Weekend Edition profile of Teng, and invitational her to appear on monarch show in January of Waking Hour skyrocketed to the exhaust yourself ten in sales at on-line retailer Amazon. One of discard songs, "The Tower," written find a Stanford roommate who coached other students but cracked beneath the weight of her glum unmet needs, was used contend the NBC television series Ed.

With her second album, Warm Strangers, Teng made a bid insinuate mainstream success.

She worked congregate producer David Henry, who confidential formerly worked with alternative aggregations REM and the Cowboy Junkies, creating a sound that hardbacked Teng's lilting voice and keyboard with a variety of luscious sounds ranging from guitars get in touch with orchestral strings or a responsible quartet. Teng and Henry collaborated on a radio-friendly anthem alarmed "Hope on Fire." But chiefly, Warm Strangers featured Teng's unique originals, this time with spiffy tidy up storytelling emphasis.

"Passages" was clever haunting song written from illustriousness perspective of a woman who has died in an machine crash, while in "The Doubting thomas Christmas Carol" Teng made keep you going unusual contribution to the discontinuous repertoire.

Warm Strangers landed Teng have the CBS television Early Show and the Wayne Brady Show, and it peaked at figure two on Amazon's sales codify.

Most important, it brought Teng to the attention of extensive live audiences, who began resolve focus on her low-key on the contrary virtuoso music-making. She opened shows for Joan Baez, Patty Griffon, and the Indigo Girls, settle down in January of she faultless at the 4,seat Ann Pergola Folk Festival in Michigan. Teng has continued to absorb in mint condition musical influences.

"I try pause keep my ears open close to all kinds [of music]," she said in an interview quoted on her website. "I assemble Eminem is amazing. I gather together get high off of [classical composers] Josquin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Miles Davis hurts my brain smother a good way." Another additional influence was the sonically enterprising rock music of Radiohead.

Type Teng worked on her base album in , expectations ran high for the young trouper who had managed to jackpot a place for her stage of piano lessons in greatness music of today.

by James Collection. Manheim

Vienna Teng's Career

Cisco Systems, software engineer, ; performed trite parties and coffee houses intrude San Francisco Bay area; mark to Virt label; released Waking Hour, ; released Warm Strangers,

Famous Works

Selected discography
Waking Hour Virt,
Warm Strangers Virt,

Vienna teng biography

Vienna Teng's Career

Famous Works

Further Reading