About Kimberly Haynes

Singer-Songwriter • Album Producer • Cantorial Soloist • Voice Instructor • Grief Coach

Kimberly’s work lives at the intersection of music, prayer, spiritual transformation, and the deeply human experience of loss and renewal.

For over twenty years, Kimberly has served as cantorial soloist at Ahavat Torah LA, where her voice has been a constant presence in the sacred moments of community life — Shabbat, the High Holidays, life cycle events, and the quiet spaces in between where prayer becomes most necessary. Her voice is not merely an instrument. It is a vessel.

Kimberly’s musical journey has taken her far beyond the bima. Her award-winning catalog includes the 2016 One World Music Album of the Year for Awaken Me, the 2021 Global Peace Song Award (Jury Prize) for Narrow Bridge — inspired by the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov — and the 2024 New Age Notes Radio Awards for The Enchantment, recognized for both Best New Age Vocal Song and Best World/Chant Song, alongside a One World Music Award (Chrissie’s Choice). Though often associated with the new age and world music genres, Kimberly’s work has always reached beyond category into something more cinematic, more emotionally universal, and more deeply human.

In January of 2020, Kimberly’s husband Brian passed away after a period of illness, leaving her to raise their two sons largely alone. What followed were years of profound grief, of carrying more than she could have anticipated, and of quietly — persistently — continuing to create.

The result is Into The Light — her most ambitious and personal work to date. An album seven years in the making, dedicated entirely to Brian, Into The Light is a cinematic, orchestral song cycle that moves through anticipatory grief, devotion, loss, transcendence, and the slow, hard work of continuing to live when the life you knew is gone. Every song is a prayer. The siddur is woven through every track. And Brian’s voice appears on the title song.

Alongside the album, Kimberly is developing a companion book — a collection of journal entries, CaringBridge writings, and personal reflections from the years surrounding Brian’s illness and passing, to be illustrated by watercolor artist Karma Vieira. Together the album and book form a complete artistic and spiritual document of one woman’s passage through the most transformative years of her life.

In addition to her work as a performing artist, Kimberly has spent over two decades teaching voice, and in recent years has integrated grief coaching into her practice — drawing from her own lived experience to support others navigating loss. She is currently developing a grief coaching training program for the Life Purpose Institute.

Kimberly performs Into The Light as a fully self-contained live experience — music, voice, and cinematic accompaniment — available for synagogues, retreat centers, grief and healing gatherings, and intimate live events.

She lives and creates in Topanga Canyon, California.