Composer
Last Sunday, I sang at a church service at St. Thomas More on the Upper East Side, and it felt really good to be back. I love singing there because it’s such a relaxed, stress-free experience: just four singers, one voice per part, in a cozy and beautiful church.
I already have a few more services booked there, so I’m looking forward to more Sundays like this. And even though it was a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was simply happy to be singing again after some time away.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Mirna Rubim in 2004 at UNIRIO in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on my very first day as a Voice Performance student at the college level, when she became my assigned voice teacher. Over time, she not only guided me in developing my vocal technique but also became a valued friend and professional collaborator, and despite my move to the United States in 2012, we have remained in touch through platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
On March 19, 2026, Dr. Rubim presented her show “Inteira” at Blue Note Rio, a performance that blended elements of cabaret, comedy, and personal reflections on her artistic journey, and featured guest performers. Approximately two months prior, I reached out to inquire whether she planned to include an original composition, and upon learning that she had begun drafting lyrics, I offered to compose the music, which led to the creation of the song “Inteira”, ultimately performed during the show. While the live performance encountered some challenges, including moments of improvisation and humor, I remain sincerely grateful for the opportunity to have my work presented in my home country.
For those interested, the performance can be viewed here (at 45:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IylvN5PrFEA
Additional information about Dr. Rubim is available at https://linktr.ee/mirnarubim
So, here we are.
Last year, I made the decision to step away from music entirely. After so many years of relentless work, I arrived at a point of exhaustion — not just physically, but creatively. What I had once pursued with such conviction had quietly stopped fulfilling me in the way I believed it did. At some point, it became tiresome and, eventually, painful. The grind from one gig to the next, the projects taken on purely out of financial necessity, the countless hours spent commuting — it was enough.
Do not misunderstand me: I am deeply grateful for the experiences I accumulated along the way. I performed with several professional vocal ensembles, traveled to Europe to present my choral works, and had the privilege of meeting extraordinary musicians whom I will always hold in high regard. By the time I stepped back, I could honestly say that I had accomplished everything I set out to do when I left Brazil nearly fourteen years ago.
What became clear to me during that period of reflection is this: my art will no longer be subject to anyone else’s approval or financial constraints. From this point forward, it exists solely as a vehicle for my own expression.
And so, I am back — slowly, deliberately, note by note.
I am currently writing new music that reflects my inner world, my convictions, and my experience of this thing we call life. I am also actively promoting my latest album, AI Atheist Angel, and I am pleased to share that I am already in the process of developing a follow-up album comprised entirely of original compositions.
Links for AI Atheist Angel:
The reality I have come to understand is this: regardless of the quality of one’s work, if people do not connect with you on a personal level, they are unlikely to support your art or advocate on your behalf. I once had meaningful connections within the Brazilian music community, but over time, through a combination of my candid communication style and the particularities of my personality, I allowed each of those relationships to deteriorate beyond repair.
I am aware that this may read as self-pitying, but that is not my intention. The combination of my limited capacity for empathy and the circumstances of my life has resulted in a profound lack of meaningful friendships. A life without close connections is, frankly, a lonely one — and I have come to recognize that this deficit has also placed a ceiling on my career, because genuine success in the arts is rarely built on talent alone. It is built on relationships, and relationships require a level of care for others that I have never been able to sustain naturally. While I am capable of forming friendships, doing so demands considerable effort from both parties. Given how isolated I already am, building new connections has become increasingly unlikely. I also have a deep aversion to small talk — and while I understand its social function, its absence makes the already difficult process of human connection even harder.
With that context established, it becomes easier to understand why my success may never be proportionate to the effort I have invested. The truth is that I am not a singer of sufficient caliber to transcend my opinions and be welcomed unconditionally. I do not care enough about social performance to pretend to be someone I am not simply to navigate the politics of the music industry. My deepest artistic passion — choral music — is, by nature, not a commercially viable pursuit. My resentment is compounded by existing in a culture that assigns far greater value to entertainment and sports than to classical music. And my frustration is rooted in the belated recognition that I should have devoted as much energy to developing human connection as I did to developing my craft. At 44, that window feels largely closed — both for others and, if I am being candid, for myself.
For all of these reasons, I am announcing that I am pressing pause on Bill Heigen. “Bill Heigen” is the stage name and professional trademark I created in 2012, and the name by which I am known in the United States. Effective now, I am stepping back from singing, composing, and the relentless pursuit of a career that has, over the past thirteen years, come to feel more like a race with no finish line than a vocation. My existing compositions will remain available for purchase, and my website will stay active. I recognize that this may sound like a defeat, but in many ways it feels like a release.
Perhaps, at some point, Bill Heigen will return — with new music, new ensembles, and a new perspective. But that remains to be seen.
I am writing this, ultimately, because honesty is what I owe myself. I am grateful for everything I have accomplished, and it has been an extraordinary journey. For now, though, the pause button is pressed.
2000 — I relocated to Rio de Janeiro. My friendships from my hometown began to fade.
2001 — I left the church, as I could no longer reconcile myself with what I saw as the superficiality and contradictions within its rituals and doctrines. My church friendships grew even more distant as a result.
2008 — I came out as gay. Every one of my church friends severed ties with me.
2012 — I moved to New York City. My Brazilian friendships, without exception, became distant.
2018 — Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil. As someone with conservative leanings, I voted for him. Friends from my college years and from the music community subsequently cut ties with me due to their opposition to him.
2021 — I publicly identified as a conservative. As a result, most of my American friends ended their relationships with me due to their opposition to Trump.
As a consequence of all of the above, I now find myself in a position of profound social isolation. I feel like someone who does not fit neatly into any community or group. My husband is, in practice, my only true friend. Everyone else, whether in Brazil or the United States, exists only as an occasional text message, and only when I am the one to initiate contact. The sole exception tends to be when someone needs something from me, such as a place to stay in New York City during a vacation. My family, for their part, has never been particularly close to me, largely due to my unconventional personality, my sexual orientation, and my difficulty connecting emotionally with others.
The difficult truth I am in the process of accepting is that hard work alone is insufficient for reaching one’s full potential. What truly makes the difference are the personal connections one builds along the way.
Since beginning my music studies in 1995, my guiding belief was that if I worked hard enough, seized every opportunity available to me, and consistently exceeded expectations, success as an artist would follow. What I failed to recognize was that interpersonal skills were just as essential a part of that equation. Thirty years later, I can see that clearly. Despite meaningful accomplishments — among them obtaining American citizenship through my musical work, receiving international recognition, and achieving financial stability — I am left with a deep sense of resentment and frustration regarding both the state of my career and the quality of my personal relationships. (go to post 3/3)
To provide some context, I am writing this primarily for myself, and for the peace of mind that comes with knowing that whoever reads this will have a clear understanding of who I am. I have a tendency to speak my mind openly, and I consciously accept the consequences of that rather than suppressing my thoughts or being disingenuous. Honesty has always been a core value of mine.
As a child, I was quiet, reserved, and averse to physical contact and mess. I also had no interest in sports, which alone was enough to make me an outsider. At that time, I had two social circles: peers from school and peers from church. The boys at school excluded me due to my disinterest in sports, while the girls kept their distance because I was the quiet, “weird kid.” My church peers were no different. Beyond being considered odd and uninterested in roughhousing or sports, I was an effeminate child. Having been raised exclusively by women and without a father figure, I had adopted many feminine mannerisms, which was frowned upon in an evangelical environment. Additionally, my family’s reputation in the community led many parents to discourage their children from associating with me.
As a teenager, my situation improved somewhat within the church community, but deteriorated further at school. I was not only perceived as strange and presumed to be gay, but I was also the openly religious kid who believed in abstinence before marriage and refrained from profanity. Within the church, my involvement as a pianist and eventual leadership role in the praise band earned me a degree of social tolerance. However, I still formed no deep friendships with boys, as I had no interest in discussing women or sports, and none with girls either, as I occupied an ambiguous social position: not openly gay enough to fill the role of the “gay best friend.”
In my twenties, after relocating to Rio de Janeiro, I began to develop some social connections. However, these relationships never felt particularly deep. At the time, I was unaware of my low capacity for empathy, and I attributed people’s reluctance to engage with me to my neutral, difficult-to-read facial expression. In retrospect, my lack of empathy likely manifested in ways I was not conscious of, and others likely sensed it, which caused them to maintain their distance.
In my thirties and forties, after emigrating to another country, my Brazilian relationships gradually faded due to the lack of ongoing contact, among other factors. Adapting to American culture presented its own challenges, as social dynamics here tend to be more reserved and less warm than what I had been accustomed to in Brazil. Building new friendships as an adult is inherently difficult, and it took me two years simply to develop a functional command of the English language. To this day, I do not feel fully confident in my English proficiency when it comes to engaging in the kind of substantive, meaningful conversations I was occasionally able to have in Portuguese.
Compounding these difficulties, my tendency toward blunt honesty contributed significantly to the deterioration of most of my American and Brazilian connections alike. The following is a brief account of how that unfolded: (go to post 2/3)
AI Atheist Angel is a 12-track album of church hymns reimagined for voice and piano — but with a twist. The voice you hear isn’t just like mine — it is mine, generated by my AI vocal clone, a digital reproduction of my own sound. This album is a collision of past and present, tradition and technology, faith and skepticism.
Each piece is an arrangement of a hymn I’ve performed at some point in my musical journey. But in this project, I’ve shifted tonalities — major to minor, minor to major — transforming the emotional palette of the music. The result is a sense of bittersweet melancholy that colors the entire album, reflecting the complex relationship I’ve had with sacred music.
I was brought into the church at the age of three by my grandmother, and I remained immersed in that world until I was twenty-one. Those years shaped me musically — I began piano lessons at fourteen, eventually becoming the church’s music minister. I spent countless hours playing and singing hymns that moved me deeply.
But spiritually, things changed. After I left the church, I began to identify as an atheist — not in opposition to belief, but in honest uncertainty. I do not claim to know whether God exists, but I know that the version of God presented in the Bible never felt real or right to me. I stepped away from religion for over a decade.
Then, life brought me to the U.S., where, ironically, church returned to my life through music. I found work as a professional choral singer, performing in services across New York and the Tri-State area. Once again, I was immersed in sacred music — and once again, I was moved by it. The beauty of the architecture, the richness of the harmony, the transcendent feeling of singing these hymns — it was all still there. But so was the discomfort with the message.
That paradox — loving the music, rejecting the theology — is the heartbeat of this album. In AI Atheist Angel, I’ve reinterpreted the hymns I once sang with devotion, using my own digital voice to offer a new kind of praise — not to a deity, but to “Light” as a symbol of knowledge, reason, and clarity. The arrangements are altered, the lyrics rewritten, and the emotional tone transformed — yet the music remains deeply reverent in its own way.
This is not a rejection of beauty. It’s an embrace of complexity. AI Atheist Angel is my way of holding space for both the love and the discomfort, the sacred and the secular, the memory and the reality.
Streaming now:
Ever wondered what would happen if a choir wandered into a nightclub? Well, I did. So, I asked @kylerbossmusic to turn four of my choral pieces into an EDM-infused experience. Voices meet synth, harmonies meet bass drops… and somehow, it works.
Omen is streaming now:
Just got back from Toronto! Despite almost freezing to death surrounded by snow and a grotesque cold winter wind, I had a blast! I was there to see the premiere of one of my choral pieces that was commissioned by a Canadian choir, and it was AMAZING! My first time in Canada! I easily see myself living there. As the famous song says: “the cold never bothered me anyway.”
For those of us working as professional singers in New York during Christmas season, saying that this is the busiest season of the year is nothing new. However, I think this is a new record for me. Between rehearsals, gigs, performances, and a full-time job as a Music Teacher, I have been working on average 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. I am exhausted, but grateful! Feel free to check out some of my projects for this month:
The Dickens’ Victorian Carollers
St. Peter’s Church Christmas Services
Bach Messiah with MACC Ensemble
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Please, enjoy this original Christmas Carol:
