Chanting

Francesca Nicosia has been chanting and leading kirtan for fifteen years. She grew up in a musical family — her mother an opera singer and father an organist — and started playing piano and singing in choirs at a young age. She went to college on a music scholarship but soon realized that the competitive environment had take all the joy out of singing for her. Around this time, she started practicing yoga and was first exposed to kirtan, bhajans and sacred chanting during a semester abroad in India, Nepal and Tibet.

She later completed a yoga teacher training while living at Shoshoni Yoga Retreat in Colorado, where chanting was an integral part of daily practice. She took up playing the harmonium (an accordion-like keyboard instrument) and was blessed to learn from and play with members of the ashram’s acclaimed kirtan band, Shiva’s Garden. She also studied classical Indian singing with Megan Yalkut. She regularly led kirtan at the Eldorado Mountain Yoga Ashram and the Denver Ashram before moving to the Bay Area in 2010.

Chanting is Francesca's musical prayer and offering on the path of devotion, or Bhakti Yoga. She is grateful to share her deep love for this devotional practice as a way to open the heart, still the mind and take refuge in our innermost experience of the Divine. 

Francesca leads kirtan at Adeline Yoga Studio and has played at the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco. She is available to lead or accompany kirtan events in the Bay Area -- please contact her for more information.

Click here to read an interview with Francesca about kirtan.