Call it the best of intentions. When chamber/folk pianist and singer Vienna Teng enrolled at the University of Michigan last year, she planned to put music on hiatus to focus on her studies at the Erb Institute for Sustainable Enterprise.

Although she did spend plenty of time in class, she also popped up as a performer at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in January, as a surprise guest of singer Brandi Carlile at the Michigan Theater, and at The Ark with Paper Raincoat, led by her pal Alex Wong. She also toured a bit last fall, played some shows in the spring, and now acknowledges maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

“It about did me in,” she admitted recently. “It wasn’t so much the sheer work load—there are people who go to school while they have small children or have other responsibilities—but I just felt like I was missing out on a lot of things. I wasn’t able to fully focus on music and I kept missing a lot of interesting things going on at school.”

With that in mind, she vowed that her Friday night show at Power Center will likely be it for a while.

“It will be my last one for the year other than one that I have in the (San Francisco) Bay area over the holidays,” she said. “The main drain was the travelling. I was getting tired to getting on a plane and having to work on a midterm while I was on the plane and then doing study sessions backstage. I figure if I can just walk down the street and play a show, that won’t be so bad. That I can do.”

Either a career in music or a career in "green" business would be plenty for most people; however, it is clear Teng is passionate about both. When she is finished with her studies in the dual-degree program she will have earned an MBA from the Ross School of Business and an MS from the School of Natural Resources & Environment.

She said music provides a safety value with studying gets to be too much.

“It’s become really valuable to me in that way; that’s why it’s been really hard to give it up,” Teng, who took her first name in adulthood as an homage to the city of Mozart and Beethoven, admitted. "As hectic as the spring was, I felt like my life balanced out in a really nice way. So I have been trying to do more writing.”

She is also branching out musically.

“I have a piano in my house in Ann Arbor now, a guitar I am very slowly learning how to play, and I actually bought an electronic drum kit over the summer, so I’ve been playing drums—not that I really know how to play drums. It’s been really fun to explore different things and not really feel any kind of time pressure as a full-time songwriter/artist to produce something, but to have it be something that, if I don’t want to do accounting or I don’t want to study statistics, I can go over to the piano and switch into a totally different mode.”

Teng said her school experience has had an effect on her songwriting.

“I think the one thing that’s really shifted is I am studying a lot of dark stuff —climate change and how difficult changing behavior is and different ways political and economic systems are entrenched in the way they are and international politics. It’s very easy to feel like there’s really not much that I can do.

“(That) has really driven me towards writing more joyful music because that’s kind of what I need to counteract that,” she explained. “I think it’s been a challenge, writing-wise, because I tend to write kind of slow, contemplative songs that are borderline depressing and that’s not music I am interested in right now because it’s not the counterweight to what I am studying.”

Although she’s been known to share the stage with musical pals like Wong, her Power Center show will be pretty much all Vienna Teng.

“I’m still cooking up some schemes,” she said. “I have contacted a little cadre of students over at the (U-M School of Music) and we’re going to try to get together and do some collaborating, which will be really fun. Other than that, it’s pretty much solo."

Teng also had some potential good news for her local fans. When she gets out of school, she hopes to stay in the area.

“My goal is to be able to pursue some kind of career in the sustainability sector while also being able to step away from that once in a while to devote time to music. … and I am actually hoping to live in Detroit when that happens. I’m spending this year going over to Detroit a lot and learning about the community there. … Maybe Michigan will be my long-term home. Ann Arbor would be a great place to come back to again and again.”