When:September 14, 2019
Time:7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Cost: $30 General Admission || $35 Reserved ||$40 Doors (Plus Applicable Service Fees)
Purchase Tickets
Join us at eTown Hall for an intimate evening of music with Vienna Teng & Special Guests!
Unlike eTown's Live Radio Show Tapings, our 'Homevibe & eTown present' series are uninterrupted full concerts that take place in eTown's solar-powered home in Boulder, CO, eTown Hall.
Doors at 6:00pm
Show at 7:00pm
Vienna Teng
“So come out. You have been waiting long enough.”
This clarion call opens Aims, Vienna Teng’s fifth studio album. It’s as much a reminder for Vienna herself as an invitation to her listeners – a call to awaken the full potential within all of us.
Indeed, the new album finds Vienna in full adventurous mode. Recorded in Nashville with producer Cason Cooley (Katie Herzig, Matthew Perryman Jones), Aims is exuberant and buoyant in its enthusiasm, yet crafted with the same creative precision that has defined her previous work. The acoustic piano, once the centerpiece of her recordings, plays an occasional supportive role here; in its place are intricate layers of electronica, percussion, strings, and electric guitars. “Cason and I built a playlist of reference songs when we started working,” Vienna remembers. “We put Beck and Florence & the Machine and Kanye West on there. James Blake, Foster the People, Vampire Weekend. We started by stealing from the music we were obsessed with.”
The result is glorious, intelligent pop music with a signature all its own. Against a backdrop of stomping percussion and a gospel-inspired refrain, “In the 99” rejects the black-and-white, us-versus-them conflict view of the Occupy movement, instead exploring inequality through the eyes of a compassionate investment banker. In the gorgeous and disturbing “Hymn of Acxiom,” Vienna sings from the perspective of Big Data, densely layering and manipulating her vocals into an electronically-textured choir to spin an eerily relevant cautionary tale. There are tender moments as well, as in the folk-tinged album closer “Goodnight New York,” a love letter to a previous home, relationship, and perhaps vocation. “I’ll say goodnight but it’s never goodbye,” she promises. If Aims is any indication, there’s even finer music to come from this artist in the years ahead.
emannuelle sasson
Born in New York City and currently residing in South Florida, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter emmanuelle sasson asked her father if she could take guitar lessons when she was just 6. When he said yes, emmanuelle practiced for hours upon hours until “I had to dip my fingers in ice water because they burned so much.”
emmanuelle was seven when she started singing and became a young songwriter by the age of fourteen. That same year, she was diagnosed with severe Scoliosis followed by a back surgery. The emotional and physical change brought down her mental state. Her escape was listening to music by some of her favorites artists; a memorable time when she started to further develop her musical taste.
“I began listening to artists like Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Rihanna, and Jason Mraz and listening to those artists encouraged me to learn more about other instruments in general.” True to her adventurous form, emmanuelle went on to teach herself how to play piano, drums, bass, and ukulele.”
At 14, emmanuelle began taking voice lessons to hone her unique vocals while continuing to feed her YouTube channel with song covers in the solitude of her bedroom/music studio. Her original material seemed entirely created from her backpack while attending high school, some while being hospitalized due to back surgery. That tracklist represented everything she had experienced over those painful years.
As for her songwriting, emmanuelle turns every day challenges and pain into her inspiration. “Every time something not-so-great happens in life I just think to myself, ‘It’s okay, I’ll write a song about it.’ Songwriting is my therapy. It helps me release any emotions I don’t know how to express just by speaking. That’s why my songs are so dark. It’s the side of myself that I don’t often show to other people. I'm an open book, but I don’t let everyone read the chapters.”
It's that raw emotional connection that sets emmanuelle apart from her contemporaries. Her lyrics are brave, warm and truthful and, above all, honest, and she’s not afraid to address complicated feelings. “Feelings aren't weaknesses, they're strengths. Whether it’s happy or sad, I want to open a whole new world so I can show people that it’s okay not to be okay.”
emmanuelle just graduated high school and released her debut album smoke&mirrors on April 19th, 2019.
emmanuelle goes on to say, “This material has some of the most honest songs I’ve ever written. It talks about anxiety, depression, complicated relationships (including friendships), and self-discovery.” In turn, emmanuelle has managed to create a musical style and message that, while evoking many of today’s top performers, stands on its own as uniquely powerfully and emotionally resonant.
emmanuelle recently performed at the NBA Halftime Show at American Airlines Arena's Xfinity East Plaza in Miami on January 23rd, as well as numerous shows for South by Southwest in March of 2019. She released a lyric video for her new single, note to self, and also went on her first tour as an opening act for Stephen Kellogg and Tyrone Wells in August of 2019.