Heavenly loved music even in the womb and would kick with joy when she heard music even then. At 5 months old she stood in the middle of her baby Music Together class and clapped in time to the music as the teacher sang a song with her guitar for the group. That is how she got the nickname “Mozart“, but her real name given at birth is Heavenly.
When she created the music video for her song “Dear Heart” she used some of the videos of her when she was a toddler because it suited the message of the song.
She was a very early walker and talker at just 6 months old, even though she was raised from birth as a trilingual in Spanish/English and Mandarin Chinese and usually bilingual and trilingual children talk later than normal because they have more to process. Heavenly was a very animated and high energy baby who was always humming and singing in her 3 languages.
She started playing violin at 21 months old and got special permission to start early at a wonderful Yale-grad Suzuki teacher who usually waited until kids were at least three to start, but Heavenly was just ready, so she got special permission. All the kids in the countryside neighborhood played violin with this teacher, so that is why Heavenly begged to play violin too and even had some of the kids come play at some of her early birthday parties. Music was always a big part of her life.
She purposely wrote the violin part into her original song “Ashes” at 13 that has won many awards for songwriting and you can see her performing it on stage in the music video she made:
Heavenly’s favorite part of violin was the performances as she loved to perform even at 2! She added playing piano at 3 and also loved performing on that and also was in the Nutcracker Ballet at 3. She watched her first symphony at 9 months old and was mesmerized and loved performances of all kinds as a baby, toddler and child. As we travelled she saw performances in many languages and cultures. She incorporated many iconic female heroes from around the world in her music video “Push You Harder” celebrating girl power!
Heavenly asked for “opera” when she was a year old so we started taking her to opera and she loved that and then we did Shakespeare plays. Adults were shocked to see a very active toddler at these sophisticated performances, but as soon as the performance started she was still as a mouse taking it all in. And afterwards she loved to go backstage and hug the actors and singers. Someone suggested getting Met Opera videos for her and she so loved them and our whole family learned about opera thanks to her passion as we had never gone before she was born.
Heavenly and her parents started travelling around the world non-stop when she was 5 and her parents brought her violin and digital piano with them. Her very first youtube video went viral and it shows her playing her violin at various places they visited in our first 18 months of world travel including deep in the Sahara desert and Turkey.
They did this in all 48 countries we visited and actually have 2 more of these videos to complete the set, but have not put them up yet.
She was mostly homeschooled as they roamed the world, but they did dip into schools in Spain and Asia for language and cultural immersion and also had to pioneer many new things for her education including doing Skype lessons for piano and violin. Here you can see some of that when she was in Spain and her piano teacher was in Chicago.
Heavenly and her parents would travel 7 months out of the year in a small, older motorhome while in Europe and then go back to the same white village for 5 months in the winter where she would go to the local school and immerse in Spanish language and culture from fist through fourth grade.
Heavenly performed a lot of flamenco during these years.
When she was 6, Heavenly and her parents traveled deep into the Sahara desert in Morocco and she rode a camel to meet a bunch of school kids to give them a concert with her violin as they had never seen a violin. Later she went even deeper into the Sahara by camel and slept over night in a Berber tent. It was an experience she will never forget and she made many new friends through music (as they just spoke Arabic and French and she just spoke English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese).
Her world travel and languages has deeply affected her music and perspective. One of her fun performances was playing violin on a camel in Petra, Jordan at 10 years old!
And here she is playing her violin around Paris at the same age:
When Mozart was 10 she skipped ahead 3 grades in school and was immersing in Mandarin at a local Chinese school in Asia and she joined the choir there and sang solos like the Earth Day Song.
She also wrote and won an elocution contest there at 10 that she wrote about her passion for the environment:
And then at 12 she wrote and won a Mandarin elocution contest about Lao Tzu at her Chinese high school (which was the first time in 63 year history of the school that a Caucasian student ever won a trophy in it).
She had started writing songs at four, but got really serious and prolific about songwriting around 10 years old and wrote a lot of great songs for a child who had no training in songwriting. She had a passion at that time for singing Karaoke which is so popular in Asia.
Even though it was a challenge with our travel lifestyle, she also kept up with piano and violin (and eventually added guitar, ukulele and didgeridoo as we travelled). Keeping up with a piano on the move is a challenge because of the size and we kept a good digital piano in our camper van and bought one for our time in Asia and sometimes we used an ironing board as a piano stand and a step ladder with a pillow on top for a piano bench, finding ways through the challenges. Violin is difficult because as a child grows, one needs to buy bigger and bigger violins that fit the growing child. This was challenging to find in various countries where we did not know the language or where to find violins. Often she would take lessons for both online, but when in Asia she found some places for lessons and performed both violin and piano in concert at an International school where she was doing piano lessons.
Heavenly’s parents did get a lot of producers who contacted them through our travel blog Soultravelers3, but when she was 12 and living in Penang, Malaysia for her Mandarin, they got a call from VP’s from Bunim-Murray who are the top production company in the U.S. who do shows like the Kardashians. They wanted her to star in her own TV show about travel. Interestingly, one of the VP’s who called and discovered Heavenly at 12 in Asia is now the general manager of the company that discovered Rosalia and launched her to stardom.
This changed everything and had them move back to the USA to prepare for the TV show, travel more around the states to know her home country better and she auditioned for and got into the highly selective Master Artist Intensive Program at Septien in Dallas (where Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato began).
The TV show ended up not going to air, but Mozart did extensive performances in top venues like Hard Rock Cafe, Gas Monkey, Prophet Bar, Six Flags, Also a casting director saw her performing her songs and cast her in her first movie lead role in “Rose” which started her adding acting to her singing and songwriting skills.
She graduated high school four years early at 14 and got a High Honors Award from Johns Hopkins University for getting a higher score on her SAT score than 98% of 18 and 19 year olds who take the test. Heavenly started college at 14 and held a 4.0 GPA while she simultaneously pursued her music and acting careers in Los Angeles.
She was a winner in the International Songwriting Competition and winner in the Unsigned Artist Songwriting Competition. She was also asked by educators in London to do a TEDtalk when she was sixteen via Skype.
Heavenly did a 10 city solo tour of Europe and has played at many great venues in Los Angeles like Hotel Cafe, Molly Malones and the iconic Avalon Hollywood. She was also a scholar classical soprano and soloist in the prestigious National Children’s Chorus and performed at Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, UCLA’s Royce Hall and more with Grammy-winning composer Eric Whitacre and more.
Heavenly did private study with Dr. Ian Krouse ( Professor of Composition and Music Associate Dean at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. She has been working regularly with Grammy-winner Mikal Blue (Colbie Caiillat, Jason Mraz, One Republic etc) on her new EP.
She did several lead roles in films releasing in 2020 and in one she sings 5 of her songs. Heavenly will be releasing two of her songs soon when the movie releases as they featured in the movie.
The first one will be the produced version of her song “Damn Girl” that was featured with the acoustic version on Famous Birthdays.
Heavenly has also been working with SM Entertainment (largest label in Asia) writing for some of their Kpop stars and in the recording studio working with some people with BMG. She has 8 songs in movies/TV including 2 in another genre for the new Bay Watch that she did for Cory Lerios (Pablo Cruise) who loved them.
She is also working on some songs in Mandarin and Spanish and some bilingual songs that will be released soon. Here are some covers she did in Mandarin and Spanish.
2020 is off to a great start and looks like it will be a very big year for Heavenly!
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Nice article well done Remko happy to see her featured here!