Vienna Teng

Vienna Teng ( born October 3, 1978 in Saratoga, California as Cynthia Yih Shih [史逸欣] ) is an American pianist, singer and singer-songwriter of Taiwanese descent. Her stage name "Vienna" alludes to the classic music of the Austrian capital. She currently lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Music

Teng's music is characterized mainly by a quiet melody, complex piano arrangements and her soft, clear voice. Their music includes folk, jazz and pop elements and a cappella influences. Her lyrics are narrative and emotional.

Vienna Teng sings mostly in English. However, the song Green Iceland Serenade, which is included as a hidden track on their second album Warm Strangers, she sings in Mandarin. The song is a Taiwanese classics from the 1950s and became famous for his interpretation by Teresa Teng.

Life

Vienna Teng playing at the age of five years of piano and composed for the first time six years. She studied Technical computer science at Stanford University. There she joined the Stanford Harmonics, a student a cappella group. She began recording her compositions at the studios of belonging to the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics ( CCRMA ), to make known their music on campus. Many of these recordings were later released on their debut album Waking Hour. After completing her university degree in 2000, Teng worked as a programmer for the company Cisco Systems, but made in their spare time to continue music. In 2002, she signed a recording contract with Virt Records and eventually quit her job at Cisco in order to devote herself entirely to her music career.

In January 2003, her first major television appearance in the Late Show with David Letterman, and was followed by more appearances in television and radio. She performed the opening act for Joan Baez, Shawn Colvin, Joan Osborne, Sarah Harmer and Marc Cohn on. Their debut album Waking Hour made ​​it to number 5 in the best-seller list of Amazon.com and the second album Warm Strangers on 2nd place

In 2006, Teng to the record label Rounder Records, and took there with the collaboration of the producer and bassist Larry Klein their third album, Dreaming Through The Noise on. Between December 2006 and spring 2007, she was with this album on tour in the United States. She toured together with Duncan Sheik and the opening act for Madeleine Peyroux. In April 2007, began her Green Caravan Tour, where they played together with cellist Marika Hughes, violinist Dina Maccabee, and percussionist Alex Wong, and on the opening acts, among others, as David Berkeley and Jenny Owen Youngs were seen.

Their fourth album Inland Territory appeared in early February 2009 in Europe and early April 2009 in the United States.

Discography

• Waking Hour (2002)
• Warm Strangers ( 2004)
• Dreaming Through the Noise (2006)
• Inland Territory (2009)
• The Moment Always Vanishing (Live ) (2010 )
• Aims (2013 )