Vienna Teng is a lot of things.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s a musician. She\u2019s a software engineer \u2013 she started recording music at Stanford University\u2019s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, and worked for Cisco Systems until her music career took off. She was salutatorian of her high school class. She has studied classical piano since age five. Songwriter, theatrical writer, and polymath, she is not easily quantified.<\/p>\n
Which is, frankly, fine. It means that you never quite know what you\u2019re going to get with her, though so far, everything has met a high standard of quality and integrity. She came out of the gate running with her 2002 debut, Waking Hour<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Teng is very, very fond of harmony and multi-layered vocals; she was a member of Stanford\u2019s a cappella<\/i> group, and it shows. On this release, she stays firmly in the singer-songwriter vein, mostly single voice and piano. If her style is reminiscent of anyone\u2019s, it\u2019s Tori Amos. Where Amos wears her emotions on her sleeve, however, Teng is more diffident, subtle, and withdrawn; the power is still there, but this is a more veiled take on the same territory. As a complement, her piano playing is virtuoso. She does things on Waking Hour<\/i> that make me stop and replay a short sequence, especially when combined with her supple, versatile voice.<\/p>\n
For me, the highlights are \u201cThe Tower\u201d and \u201cEnough To Go By\u201d; fans of our \u201c101 Favorite Songs (More Or Less)\u201d series know that those two tracks showed up on my list there. But really, the entire album is solid, front to back. If I had to pick some other favorites, it would be \u201cMomentum,\u201d \u201cGravity,\u201d and the smoky-club \u201cUnwritten Letter #1.\u201d If there is a flaw to Waking Hour<\/i>, it\u2019s that sometimes the production is so precise and delicate that it loses force; \u201cDaughter\u201d is hard to hear compared to the other tracks on the CD.<\/p>\n
Vienna Teng is supremely gifted and an amazing performer. Pick this one up today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10501],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-45866","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-vienna-teng","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45866"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45866"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}