Vienna Teng, Club Cafe, Pittsburgh, October 27, 2005
By Louis Luangkesorn

Vienna Teng came to Club Cafe on the Southside as part of her tour of her album Warm Strangers. We got there a bit late. Andy and the rest of the PAAYPA crowd were at a few tables in the corner, but by the time we got there it was SRO. We had a good spot on the floor, right along the diagonal sightline in front of the stage.

Vienna worked her audience well. And makes the concert experience one of being in the room with an artist as a human being, rather then just going to a show. I enjoyed the audience interaction. When there are < 150 people in the room, it can be a bit more intimate experience than a concert hall. For one piece, Soon Love Soon, she had the audience joining in, with the audience taking the chorus and part of the background vocals.

The last three pieces were a good finish. I really like Harbor, which is probably the feature track of Warm Strangers. She made the comment that Harbor was a 'wasted request, because we like playing it so much.' It is a song of someone whose lover encounters struggles, and the singer offers safe haven from the struggles faced in the world. As the closing piece, she and her string accompanists left the stage and a few of us were calling 'one more' as she walked through the crowd to the back. She did come back, and as requests came out one was for Passage. Her comment was this was a very depressing song to end with so she did two encores. Passage is about a young lady who dies in a car crash. And she looks upon the lives of people she cares about; her sister, her mother, her lover; as they build their lives around the void left by her absence. It is a very sensitive piece, not about grief or anger at death, but of sadness, of caring for people she is no longer around, . Last, to end on a happier note, she played (Green Island Lullaby) [Note: The album notes and the CD track list for Warm Strangers do not give the name of Track 12, which is Green Island Lullaby.] She sings beautifully and sound like a Taiwanese vocalist. What is surprising as she learned this from her grandmother, but she does not actually speak chinese. Her joke was when she told her family she was going to sing this, they had to teach her what it meant before she embarrassed them.

The concert was something to be enjoyed, for Vienna's audience interaction, the soft sounds of her piano, and the depth of the lyrics. Her songs are of working through life, through hope, love, commitment and death. The sensitivity of Passage and other pieces is the mark of an artist who is worth knowing as a person, not just an entertainer. I would definitely recommend her concerts, and failing that, recordings of her music.

Note: She has some of her music in digital form on her website here: http://viennateng.com/listen/.

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