Last Friday, October 28, musician Vienna Teng gave a special performance for Carnegie Mellon students at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater, sponsored by Awareness of Roots in Chinese Culture (ARCC). Since Teng was touring in Pittsburgh at Club Café, ARCC invited the singer, songwriter, and pianist to play a second, smaller show. After the concert ended, Teng was also available for a question-and-answer session and autograph signing.

Teng graduated with a degree in computer science from Stanford University and was working at Cisco Systems in Silicon Valley when she decided to break from traditional employment and try her hand at the music industry. With the success of her 2002 release Waking Hour, comprised primarily of songs written by Teng during high school and college, Teng went on to release a sophomore album Warm Strangers. Both were met with positive critical acclaim because of Teng's insightful lyrics, beautiful voice, and stirring melodies.

Although the Art Museum Theater was nearly full, Teng's friendliness and vibrancy lent a feeling of intimacy between her and the audience. When she greeted the audience warmly, only to receive an awkward pause and a few "hello"s in reply, Teng cracked a joke about the situation.

"[This is] sorta like when people ride past you on their bike or walk really fast and they ask, 'hi, how you doing?' but they don't really want an answer," Teng mused, completely relaxing the audience.

Teng played a few of her new songs in addition to a variety of previously recorded ones from Waking Hour and Warm Strangers. Between songs, Teng often told stories about the songs' inspirations. For example, she explained that her song "Anna Rose" is somewhat a sequel to "Lullaby for a Stormy Night" because a girl Teng's friend once babysat for so loved "Lullaby" that Teng thought it would be appropriate to write her a "thank you" song in response.

Regarding her song "Between," Teng said that she made the subject matter so vague that even her friends couldn't figure out what it was about.

"My English major friend thought it was about something very poetic," said Teng. "And my engineering friend thought it was about sex."

In addition to explaining most of the songs' backgrounds, Teng also talked more generally about the song-writing process and how she came to be a musician. Teng described how living at home has made her write many "domestic" songs and how she generally needs some tragedy in her life to write a song. Teng went on to say that she's been very happy lately, and that was almost detrimental to her songwriting.

"My boyfriend offered to break up with me," Teng joked. She explained that she's been living vicariously through her friends going through hard times to garner inspiration for her third album.

Teng also said that she has trouble writing songs on the road, and that she took time off at home to work solely on a third album.

"I started writing songs [at home] because I found things to procrastinate on… like laundry," Teng said with a smile.

In the question-and-answer session later on, Teng expanded how procrastination, in addition to sleep-deprivation, has aided her in the song-writing process since she was in high school.

In humorously stereotypical Carnegie Mellon fashion, the first question Teng was asked was, "What's your favorite programming language?" Although the audience laughed raucously, Teng managed to keep her cool and answer, "PHP." However, that wasn't the only computer-science-related question Teng would receive that evening.

"Was there a particular moment when you decided to stop programming?" asked architecture first-year Spencer Gregson, eliciting laughter from Teng and the audience alike.

"It wasn't really my passion," Teng replied, explaining that much of the reason she stuck with computer science in college was to prove "a girl can write code." She continued to say, "It wasn't really difficult to leave a software job for music."

Teng was also asked questions about what music she's been listening to (Outkast, Eminem, Radiohead, Coldplay, and classical) and what kind of classical training she herself has had ("my training doesn't extend that far"). When asked where she thinks she will be in five years, Teng replied, "I would just like to be better at what I do."

To conclude the evening, Teng played two encore songs. One was "Eric's Song," which an audience member asked her to play in honor of his friend's birthday. The second was "Soon Love Soon," which a member of the Carnegie Mellon a capella group Soundbytes requested. Since five members of the Soundbytes were present at the show, Teng asked the group to come up and sing with her. The resulting combined performance was an unexpected and lovely end to the evening.

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