![]() “New York and San Francisco have quite a bit in common. They all live in this great big house - in my head.” Some songs I get along quite well with and, with others, I’ve had a friction-filled relationship. “They have lives, personalities and souls of their own. “I have to trust that, although a lot of times I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall, eventually, if I’m diligent, the songs will become what they need to be.” She began the song “Augustine” in 2005 and completed it for this album. Yet the material all ties together beautifully. The new songs range in subject matter from Teng’s Chinese-American background to environmental and social issues. Time and effort has paid off, culminating in her brilliant new release, “Inland Territory.” Consistently compelling, the album is remarkably varied, from the a cappella foot-stomper “Grandmother Song” to the epic orchestral accompaniment of “Antebellum.” In the end, I learned to embrace and enjoy all those things, but it took a long time.” “Here I was in my jeans, T-shirt, flip-flops and Supercuts hair cut. Everything they did was a form of artistic expression. I would tour and see all these artists who would just naturally dress interestingly and had all these great ideas for the artwork of their albums and their merchandise. “There was also this whole separate aspect of having grown up in a science, engineer, geeky, nerdy kind of culture, and suddenly I was in the arts, where aesthetics has a lot to do with it. Teng also had to get better at the business side of music, an area that seemed foreign to her - promotion, booking, etc. That was an incredible opportunity for me to practice performing and singing and to get better at it.” Once in a while, I would notice that people were really listening and they would come back the next week just to hear me. Red Rock was great for that, because I would set up in the corner and just play everything I could think of for two hours. “I didn’t really know how to be a solo performer. Once she took the plunge into a music career, she honed her craft at Mountain View’s Red Rock Coffee Co. She experimented with recording her own songs. Teng absorbed influences of vintage folk artists, then the Lilith Fair circle and, more recently, such indie pop-rockers as Andrew Bird and Radiohead.Īt University, Teng sang with the Stanford Harmonics a cappella group. But they still always ask, ‘How are you saving for retirement? What’s your health care like? Do you have a rainy day fund that will last you 12 to 18 months in case anything happens? How are you going to support a family? How are you going to find a guy to start a family with?’ So they have all these kinds of questions, which are not unique to Chinese families.” “So when I talk to them, I can feel that tension, because, on the one hand, they’re very happy that I’ve gotten as far as I have in music, and they know that I’m having a great time creating music and living a life in music. “It felt natural to me, at the age of 6, to ignore what was on the page and start figuring out what the relationships were between the keys on the piano, trying to fit them together in ways that sounded good to me.” Teng studied classical piano from age 5 and was soon composing. “So the question was, ‘Is it useful to anyone else?’ So it was only when I started to get a sense that sharing my music would be a good thing for a lot of other people that I started to think about doing it as a career.” It challenged and nourished me in ways that nothing else could. “It was always there, always such a good friend to me. “Music just surfaced as this thing that was undeniable,” Teng, 31, explained to The Daily News. If you’re not lucky enough to land tickets, watch for a December show at San Francisco’s The Independent. She performs in her hometown on Saturday, at Montalvo’s Carriage House Theatre. ![]() With TV appearances, including “Late Show With David Letterman,” and tours with Duncan Sheik and Madeleine Peyroux, Teng has established herself as one of today’s most eclectic, exciting, inventive singer-songwriters. ![]() In 2002, she left the job to pursue music full time. Teng studied computer science at Stanford before working as a software engineer for Cisco Systems.īut Teng could only deny her true passion for so long. Her brother and sister became scientists. Saratoga-raised Vienna Teng’s parents were in the high-tech industry.
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