"Everyone should have a chance to experience the musical magic that happens in a circle singing workshop — there is a deep spiritual connection experienced individually and collectively through shared breath and song. In these times, making space for beauty is essential to our survival. Francisco's workshops are surely one way to make that happen."
His story
How he got here.
Francisco grew up in Quito, Ecuador, in a household where music was not a subject — it was the air. His mother hummed constantly, the way some people breathe without noticing. His father brought home bolero records and movie soundtracks and played them the way other parents might leave a light on: as a steady signal that something warm was happening inside. By the time Francisco could articulate what music meant to him, it had already shaped the whole contour of his inner life. It was synonymous, from the very beginning, with love, care, and belonging.
The path from Quito to Berklee College of Music was long and formative in ways that went far beyond a degree. He graduated with a dual degree in Vocal Performance and Contemporary Writing & Production, but the deeper education happened in rooms and relationships: studying circle singing and spontaneous composition with Rhiannon and Joey Blake; encountering Bobby McFerrin in a way that reoriented what Francisco thought a voice could do; learning Indian and Mediterranean traditions with Zahara and Christiane Karam; finding his Latin roots clarified and deepened by Bernardo Hernandez and Oscar Stagnaro. He went on to complete all three modules of Jeanie LoVetri's Somatic Voicework™ training and is currently finishing a Master of Music in Choral Conducting at Cal State LA. Each mentor added a layer; together they built something that belongs to no single tradition.
Professionally, Francisco has worked at the highest levels of the industry — without ever seeming particularly interested in that framing. He has served as Music Director at Walt Disney Concert Hall, toured the United States with Los Angeles Azules, and collaborated with artists including U2, Noel Schajris, and Kurt Elling. He has worked alongside producers KC Porter, Crisantes, and Vago Galindo, recorded for the acclaimed singer COSME, and is now releasing his first solo album as MONCAYO on Dynamo Productions. These experiences matter. But they have always been, for Francisco, a means toward something rather than a destination.
What pulled him toward facilitation was something he kept witnessing in rehearsal rooms, on tour, in studio sessions: the moment when a group of people stop performing separately and start listening together. The music changes entirely. He wanted to know how to create that moment on purpose — not just wait for it to happen. Teaching, leading workshops, facilitating circle singing gave him a laboratory for that question. He completed his Somatic Voicework™ training partly to understand the instrument more rigorously. He pursued choral conducting partly to understand what a room of voices, well-led, can become. The facilitation was not a pivot away from music. It was a deeper way in.
Withness exists because Francisco has seen, over and over, that people are longing for genuine connection. Not networking. Not entertainment. The kind of contact that happens when strangers stand in a circle, take a breath at the same moment, and make something together that none of them could have made alone. We live in a time of increasing isolation — from ourselves, from each other, from any shared sense of community — and music opens a door that language alone cannot. It allows us to express what cannot always be spoken, to feel what has been buried, to experience belonging without needing agreement or explanation. When people make music together, they often discover something in themselves they didn't know was there. That discovery is what Withness is for.