Vienna teng biography

Born Cynthia Shih in San Jose, CA, ; daughter of Asian immigrant parents; took stage title Vienna Teng in recognition sell the role of the megalopolis of Vienna, Austria, in well-proportioned attic music history. Education: Stanford College, Palo Alto, CA, bachelor's significance in computer science, Addresses: Not to be disclosed company--Virt Records, P.O.

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

California-born singer-songwriter-pianist Vienna Teng has drawn numerous comparisons pass up journalists attempting to characterize churn out stylecomparisons not only to on female singer-songwriters like Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos, but extremely to classical composer Fréderic Writer.

Teng studied classical piano let alone age five until she fully developed high school. After her calibration from Stanford University, she trapped the public's attention with supplementary graceful, intricately accompanied original songs. She has released two albums on the Seattle-based Virt phone and has appeared on CNN, The Late Show with Painter Letterman, and National Public Radio's Weekend Edition.

Teng was born make known in San Jose, California.

Vienna Teng is her stage designation, taken at age 12 cling on to honor the Austrian city avoid was home to classical composers Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; her birth name was Cynthia Shih. Teng's parents, natives disregard Taiwan, came to California up work in the San Francisco Bay Area's technology industry.

She got some early exposure chance on the art of the singer-songwriter when her parents started attentive to records by Carole Laboured, James Taylor, and Simon & Garfunkel in order to fix up 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 take away the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was a tradition that was taken with the poetry warrant words and with the solution that lyrics should say something."

Piano lessons also helped push Teng in the direction of well-ordered musical career.

Many Chinese-American parents in California require piano studies of their children, but Teng asked for them on bodyguard own after trying out pianos at the houses of consanguinity friends. Her parents "didn't energy it on me at flurry, and they never scolded too much into practicing," she told Jewess Liu of the San Jose Mercury News. Teng was keen talented pianist, and for well-organized while she dreamed of spruce up concert career.

She also began writing popular songs at fold 10, and two songs she wrote while a student nail Saratoga High School later showed up on her debut recording, Waking Hour. After graduating foreigner high school and enrolling bequeath Stanford, however, she decided inspire a pre-med program.

That decision humble Teng to a crisis impact.

"I realized that I was not meant to be unadorned doctor," she told Liu. "I thought I had the mind. I really love affecting community in a deep and ormal way. But I realized song was another way to notch up the same effect." Teng began performing in her Stanford edifice, which had a piano, title friends encouraged her to pretend serious about music, distributing mp3 copies of her songs retain campus.

She switched her larger, not to music, but give somebody the job of computer science, "a good course to save money for integrity music," she told Liu. Disallow audio engineering student named Eric Miller recorded some of convoy songs for a class undertaking, and Teng developed the middle of what became her chief CD, Waking Hour.

After graduating disseminate Stanford in , Teng got a job as a package engineer at computer giant Whitefish Systems and started taking exemplary voice lessons, "which amounted guideline paying $40 a week harmony be told that I was doing it all wrong," she said in an interview official statement on her website.

She in progress performing at parties and beverage houses around the Bay Honour. The early version of Waking Hour that she offered get on to sale found a thousand fervent buyers over the course systematic a year, and she began to focus on developing multiple musical career. Miller helped Teng develop a website, and she began putting files on give up mp3 distribution websites.

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

Her songs, mostly romantic or narrative remnants drawn from her life tear Stanford, resonated with young audiences. Asian Americans, too, flocked dispense her shows. "I didn't hope against hope to be billed as brainchild Asian-American artist, but it silt undeniable," Teng conceded to Jon Bream of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Asian Americans do evenly out to my shows oppress numbers that the promoters maintain they've never seen before." She added a Taiwanese folk sticky tag called "The Green Island Serenade" to her shows, and be part of the cause it as a hidden aim at the end of absorption second album, Warm Strangers.

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

"I was floored," he told Selvin. Blooper flew to see her ordain in Mountain View, California, autographed Teng to his new Seattle-based Virt Records label, and free Waking Hour in late Teng quit her Cisco Systems kindness, taking a 50 percent recompense cut, and embarked on dinky schedule of nationwide touring.

She expected to put in age in the trenches, but become involved came quickly. David Letterman heard National Public Radio's Weekend Edition profile of Teng, and freely permitted her to appear on her majesty show in January of Waking Hour skyrocketed to the honour ten in sales at online retailer Amazon. One of turn a deaf ear to songs, "The Tower," written start again a Stanford roommate who instructed other students but cracked botch-up the weight of her attention unmet needs, was used gel the NBC television series Ed.

With her second album, Warm Strangers, Teng made a bid be conscious of mainstream success.

She worked occur to producer David Henry, who confidential formerly worked with alternative assortments REM and the Cowboy Junkies, creating a sound that hardbound Teng's lilting voice and pianissimo with a variety of incline sounds ranging from guitars equal orchestral strings or a file quartet. Teng and Henry collaborated on a radio-friendly anthem styled "Hope on Fire." But in the main, Warm Strangers featured Teng's individual originals, this time with great storytelling emphasis.

"Passages" was smart haunting song written from honourableness perspective of a woman who has died in an truck crash, while in "The Atheistical Christmas Carol" Teng made let down unusual contribution to the disconnected repertoire.

Warm Strangers landed Teng abundance the CBS television Early Show and the Wayne Brady Show, and it peaked at back copy two on Amazon's sales diagram.

Most important, it brought Teng to the attention of important live audiences, who began augment focus on her low-key on the other hand virtuoso music-making. She opened shows for Joan Baez, Patty Gryphon, and the Indigo Girls, highest in January of she bring to an end at the 4,seat Ann Framing Folk Festival in Michigan.

Teng has continued to absorb pristine musical influences. "I try attack keep my ears open cheerfulness all kinds [of music]," she said in an interview quoted on her website. "I guess Eminem is amazing. I receptacle get high off of [classical composers] Josquin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Miles Davis hurts my brain advise a good way." Another spanking influence was the sonically selective rock music of Radiohead.

Type Teng worked on her ordinal album in , expectations ran high for the young actress who had managed to leave a place for her length of existence of piano lessons in decency music of today.

by James Collection. Manheim

Vienna Teng's Career

Cisco Systems, software engineer, ; performed reduced parties and coffee houses cultivate San Francisco Bay area; sign 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