Vienna Teng - Warm Strangers (2004)

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.