Vienna Teng - Warm Strangers

Artist: Vienna Teng
Title: Warm Strangers
Year of Release: 2005
Record Label: Virt Records
Genre: Pop
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Warm-Strangers-Vienna-Teng/dp/B0000ZMHBU/ref=m_art_pr_3/002-3183959-2523266

I'm not a pop fan, but I keep my ears open, both for music and lyrics, hoping to discover gems in this musically uninspired first decade of a new century. Well, there's much in this album to make me smile and consider my quest fruitful. Maybe there's an added feeling with her - after all, she's a software engineer, too - but for sure she has all the cards to conquer other ears than mine. Vienna's songs are stories, often very original ones. Put Dido, Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones and Tori Amos in a shaker, shake well and pour. I have all her (3) albums and like them all, but this is the one I suggest to start with. A gifted artist with hopefully a big career ahead, to be closely followed.

Favorite song: Shine

shine with all the untold
hold the light given unto you
find the love to unfold
in this broken world we choose

Lugano, interesting Artist, good review, I just might give it a whirl !!

just ordered this from CD universe...

Got my CD in the mail yesterday when I got home from work and put it in the CD player.

WOW! An amazingly crystal clear voice. Here is some more information about her:

It's not unusual to see someone leave her high tech job these days to seek out new adventures. But how many of them wind up performing on the "Late Show with David Letterman" less than six months later?
By the time San Francisco-based singer/songwriter/pianist Vienna Teng, 26, quit her full-time software engineering job at Cisco Systems in 2002, she had signed with independent label Virt Records and was preparing for her full-length CD release, "Waking Hour." She was soon opening for such artists as Shawn Colvin and Joan Osborne. With her graceful melodies and evocative lyrics, Vienna has garnered critical acclaim and a rapidly growing legion of fans throughout the world.
Vienna has returned with her sophomore release, "Warm Strangers," a diverse collection of lush, melodic songs, incorporating Vienna's classical background and folk sensibilities within a contemporary pop framework. Whereas "Waking Hour," written during the high school and college years, was mostly autobiographical, "Warm Stranger"s marks Vienna's bold leap into fiction. Orchestral and acoustic landscapes, using everything from string quartets to slide guitars, provide an inviting sonic backdrop for her short stories of love, death, struggle and hope.

Got my CD finally! What a fantastic voice! Thanks for the reveiw!

I'd also throw a bit of Tori Amos into that shaker of yours Lugano!

You don't have any of her other CDs do you? What are they like?

I also have her other 2 albums: Waking Hour and Dreaming Through Noise. Very enjoyable, too. You can listen to 30 seconds of each song at the iTunes store and decide for yourself if you'd like to have them. Depending on the song, they sound great on the ML's. Songs like "Transcontinental, 1:30 AM" from Dreaming or "Daughter" from Waking Hour give you the impression that he is in the same room with you, just a few meters apart