About Cantaloupe Music Productions
For over 15 years, Cantaloupe Music Productions has been an extensive, eclectic, relied-upon resource for quality live music—for corporate events, private parties, receptions, performance series, festivals, cultural and educational institutions.
Although we began with Brazilian music, today we offer a roster of top musicians in other musical genres, many of them hard to find at the level we work with: you’ll find Argentine tango, Cuban, Venezuelan, Peruvian, Columbian, an authentic Puerto Rico bolero trio, contemporary African music, as well as superb American jazz, blues and swing ensembles and vocalists.
In addition, we are proud to be Management for Latin GRAMMY winner Pedro Giraudo and his tango ensembles.
We are large enough to handle your event of any size, yet small enough to give you the focused, personal attention you deserve. We’ve booked a “batucada” of 40 Brazilian drummers performing their thunderous rhythms outside the New York Stock Exchange at 7:30 AM to celebrate the listing of the first Brazilian firm on the NYSE; we’ve booked the best solo pianists and guitarists for dinner parties, small ensembles with and without vocals, and a 10-piece carnaval formation that has performed to audiences of many thousands at the largest Brazilian Carnaval celebration in the United States.
About Ellen Azorin, President
The daughter of two musicians, (her father was a bassoon player and her mother a pianist) Ellen grew up with music in her blood. But she didn’t begin her professional career in music. It was the creative challenge of advertising that first called to her, where she became a Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather. But her love affair with Brasil — its language, its people, its culture, and its music — was powerful, and in 1998 she left advertising to form her own company, Cantaloupe Music Productions, which combined her various passions: music, writing, and Brasil — and sharing her enthusiasm with others through her marketing experience.
Today, Ellen lives in New York City, speaks fluent Portuguese, visits Brasil regularly, and when she’s not listening to Brasilian music of all kinds — from roots samba to “choro novo”, she’s likely to be found in a New York City jazz club. She also loves classical music, opera — in fact almost any music that’s honest and preferably acoustic — and she lives by her company slogan: “We believe in live music.”