VIENNA TENG
With her album "Warm Strangers" in the early 2000s, Vienna Teng celebrated her breakthrough, which brought her into three Billboard charts and placed her at number 2 on Amazon's bestseller list. She appeared on the legendary David Letterman Show and was a support act for Joan Baez, Marc Cohen, Indigo Girls, and Shawn Calwin. Tours not only took her across the USA but also thrilled European audiences at her numerous concerts. Sometimes she performed with string instruments, other times with the congenial multi-instrumentalist Alex Wong.
And all of this despite the fact that the Asian-American Californian actually had a secure job with one of the big names in the IT industry in Silicon Valley. This was only logical, given that she studied and graduated in Computer Science at the highly prestigious Stanford University.
But her childhood and youth dream was always music. Already at five years old, she played the piano and composed at the age of six. She remained self-taught and even gave herself a stage name as a child: "When I played some rock songs and made the childlike decision to become a star, I absolutely wanted to have a stage name. That's how I came up with Vienna Teng, as a tribute to the city of Vienna, which I imagined as a fairytale home of Mozart and Beethoven."
Her music sits somewhere between folk and pop, with a bit of jazz and a bit of classical. Her wonderful soprano voice can range from very soft to powerfully strong, and her lyrics are clever and introspective. In her self-composed and self-lyriced songs, Vienna Teng is a pragmatic philosopher; she reflects on fate, family, relationships, politics, and religion. She raises her voice, takes a stand—far beyond the everyday pop music scene. But she doesn’t just sing; she also actively engages, for example, with personal commitment to "Habitat for Humanity," an organization that worldwide advocates for dignified housing for even the poorest.
As she previously interrupted her IT career, Vienna Teng pauses her music career, returns to the university, and studies ecology, which leads her to a new field in climate protection, alternative energy, and waste management. There are also family changes; she becomes an adoptive mother to her partner's two children and also has a child herself in 2020.
For a long time, music was just a hobby, but now this wonderful artist—whom we have missed for so long—is being drawn back to the concert stages. Back with her versatile piano playing, her catchy melodies, her profound lyrics, and her wonderful voice. Welcome back, Vienna Teng!
Image: credit: Karen Shih
Doors open: 7:00 PM | Start: 8:00 PM
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
