When classically trained pianist Cynthia Yih Shih decided to pursue a career in music, she needed a snappier stage name. So she rechristened herself as Vienna Teng, conceived her folk-fluttery sound while studying computer science at Stanford, and self-produced her “Waking Hour” debut while working as a software engineer at Cisco Systems. Backing her new “Inland Territory” album, the recent New York transplant returns to town Sunday for two shows with her percussionist partner Alex Wong.
Why did you ever leave the Bay Area? Well, I’d lived there all my life, and I knew if I didn’t make a conscious decision to try living somewhere else, I was never going to leave. And in a way, I left to get a better sense of appreciation for it, because while I was in San Francisco, I thought, ‘Oh, I live here, that’s fine, that’s cool.’ But I didn’t really have a perspective on it. Now I’m like, ‘S.F. — cool!’ I remember all the stuff I took for granted — the weather, the skyline, the history of it.
