Sat 9/28 @ 8PM
Since the Lilith Fair days, intense female singer-songwriters accompanying themselves on piano have become legion.
Vienna Teng’s background is a little more unusual than most.
She started playing classical piano and writing songs as child. She took the name “Vienna” — not her real name — in honor of the city that produced so many great classical composers.
She continued to make music for fun while attending Stanford, where she got a computer science degree. She was a computer geek in the Silicon Valley until 2002 when she threw over the traces and followed her muse to do music fulltime.
Teng produced four albums before she took another semi-sabbatical to earn a graduate degree at the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.
But she and her piano will be at the Kent Stage this week with a brand-new album, Aim, her first in for years. Seems nothing can stop this girl from making music.
Despite the high level of her well-schooled keyboard chops, her flexible, soaring vocal instrument, and the thoughtful and literate quality of her lyrics, her music is less convoluted with a solider pop sensibility than many of her ilk.
New York based folk duo Barnaby Bright — Nathan and Rebecca Bliss — open.
Tickets are $20.
https://www.facebook.com/ViennaTeng
Kent, OH 44240