Ivan F. Alvarez

Music entrepreneur currently presiding over CdA Music Group, a full service entertainment company he founded in 2006 which represents a century of marquee recordings from artists as varied as the historic Sonora Mantancera, Ernesto Lecuona and Tito Rodriguez to more recently artists such as The Weather Girls, Néstor Torres, Andy, DJ Negro and Vico C. Alvarez is also a producer of the theatrical production NeoDance.

Before founding CdA, Alvarez served as SVP Latin America for Universal Music Publishing Group for more than ten years, where he founded and ran Universal’s Latin American region including the US Latin division. Alvarez signed and worked with hit songwriters, producers and artists such as Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Gustavo Santaolalla (Juanes, Brokeback Mountain, Babel), KC Porter (Ricky Martin, Santana), Rudy Pérez (Cristina Aguilera, Luis Miguel, Cristian Castro), Jorge Luis Piloto (Cristina Aguilera, Celia Cruz, Jerry Rivera), AB Quintanilla III (Selena, Kumbia Kings), platinum Mexican rock act Molotov and Argentina’s Alejandro Lerner. During his tenure, Universal was named ASCAP’s Latin Publisher of the Year for five of the nine years it was eligible including the last year of Alvarez’ stewardship when Universal’s BMI company was also ranked as Billboard’s number one music publishing company in the Latin market.

Alvarez also served as President of FLADEM (the Federation of Latin American publishers), as a Board of Governor at the Recording Academy and as a Principal and Board Member at the non-profit Entertainment Industry Incubator.

Prior to joining Universal, Alvarez was Director of Latin Membership for ASCAP, where he signed songwriters such as Enrique Iglesias, Arturo Sandoval, Juan Gabriel, Omar Alfanno, Olga Tañón and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and founded outreach programs such as El Premio ASCAP.

Prior to this, Alvarez worked at the NMPA/Harry Fox Agency negotiating synchronization licenses on behalf of its publisher principals. Alvarez holds an AAS and BS from New York University and a JD from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Legal training included international law studies in Hong Kong. Alvarez’ professional background also includes work at the law firm of Feinman & Krasilovski, where he represented clients such as the estate of Rachmaninoff and a number of publishing companies in areas such as publishing administration, royalty audits, contract negotiations, estates and general consulting.