Kawika heftel is a classically-trained musician focusing on New Age piano. He lived approximately half his life in the tropical state of Hawaii, where he started studying the piano. He first started writing music in high school after moving to Provo, Utah, where he currently resides. His debut album, Solace, was released in 2001 and provided most of the funding for an LDS mission to the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from 2001-2003. Kawika is a student of Brigham Young University studying Media Music and Computer Science and is currently working on a econd CD, to be released in the Provo area. awika has also dabbled in other areas of songwriting and performance, including a current project writing music to promote a screenplay for the movie "Exiled" by Helene Holt and starting an A Cappella group in February 2005 under the name Coalescence. He is the group's main arranger and composer. Currently Kawika's main performance venue is Sweet's Island Place in Provo, and both he and Coalescence have planned performances in Las Vegas in the summer of 2005. Kawika's music conveys a personal landscape of emotion, filled with passion, longing, hope, and triumph. He strives to convey his emotion through his music, in the hope that others may benefit from it as he has. "Pianist and composer Kawika Heftel's debut album shows a depth and maturity beyond what you might expect of a 19-year-old, incorporating pieces he's written mostly in a light classical vein, with touches of soft jazz and folk and other genres... His compositions are, for the most part, soft and moody, living up to the CD's title. And he plays with both skill and passion, conveying the emotion of his work." -Carma Wadley Deseret News senior writer