Greg Alper never would have imagined that YouTube, the scrappy video-sharing Web site could have revived his signature 1978 jazz album, ‘Fat Doggie,’ which would lead to its re-mastering at Abbey Road Studios in London in 2010.   The tale is intriguing and a twist of fate, says the Pacific Palisades musician. ‘The album is a collector’s item that had lots of airplay in the ’70s,’ Alper says. ‘Some cuts had been uploaded to YouTube and were noticed by musicians from First Hand Records, Ltd., who produce music and a re-issue series.’   Alper’s band experimented with various forms of jazz fusion in the ’70s and ’80s. They created a new sound by interweaving jazz, Latin, funk, R&B and world beat rhythms into their original vocal and instrumental compositions.   For Alper, who has since enjoyed a career in film scoring and teaching, reviving the band’s ’70’s recording was a highlight of his life, bringing back memories of his unbridled performing days in New York.   He went to London to oversee the project, and was thrilled to be in one of the most famous studios in the world, most notable for being the venue in the 1960s for innovative recording techniques adopted by the Beatles, Pink Floyd and others.   ’I liked the classic electronics, the old mixing consoles,’ Alper reminisces, even though his album was re-mastered using the latest digital technology. ‘In the old days, the engineers all wore white jackets.’   ’Fat Doggie’ features Richie Morales (drums), who also played with Spyro Gyra, the Brecker Brothers and Ray Baretto; Chuck Loeb (guitar), musical director for Stan Getz; Ray Anderson (trombone, vocal), named Best Trombone by Downbeat five years in a row; and Alper, wailing on the tenor and soprano sax.   For 50 years, the saxophone has been companion, therapist and inspiration for Alper. The first time he heard John Coltrane’s signature album ‘A Love Supreme’ in the early ’70s, it changed his life.   ’I had a dream that night in which these giant saxophones came at me. I awoke the next morning and vowed that I was going to be a sax player.’ Thankfully for Alper, his epiphany hadn’t occurred at a bullfight or Indy race.   A student at Indiana University, he soon was possessed by the instrument and explored the colors and capabilities of the hybrid horn, halfway between the woodwinds and brass.   He buckled down with the sax, practicing 16 hours of day, taking time off only for class and sleep. He found that the versatility of the horn, thought to be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds and the most adaptive of the brass, suited his emotional temperament.   Alper, who has lived in the Palisades with his wife Sonja for over 20 years, has been immersed in music his entire life. He taught himself piano by listening. ‘I was composing at 6 on the piano and then on the guitar, and by 12, I was performing in clubs around Chicago [his hometown].’   There was a time in college’a memorable week when ‘a friend invited me to jam with a bunch of guys, and we just holed up in his house. It was great.’ After graduating from Indiana in 1975 with a creatively sculpted B.A. in arts (an independent major in music and experimental tape), Alper decamped for New York. ‘This was at a time when there was a willingness and availability for great music and an eagerness to entertain,’ he says. He worked on developing styles and interpretations and performed several nights a week at dance clubs, such as Broadway Charlie’s, and Prescott’s in the West Village.   ’One of the bands I played with had a three-month gig at the Village Gate. We opened for Charles Mingus, Dizzy, Art Blakey, Stanley Turentine. So I would hear these guys play five nights a week and learned a lot. ‘I even sat down with Rashid Ali [John Coltrane’s drummer] a couple of times.’   And then he put together the Greg Alper Band of extraordinary talents that for a brief time was magical.   He kept the band going, but gradually the personnel left, so Alper segued into writing for other instruments. ‘I started writing for industrial films, commercials and films, eventually moving to Los Angeles in 1989. He scored over 100 films, including a song for ‘Random Hearts’ with Harrison Ford, and for computer games, most notably ‘War Craft.’   L.A. turned out to be more difficult to crack than he had hoped, so ‘in order to survive, I started teaching.’   To listen to Alper talk about his work with students, from ages 4 to 80, offers insights into the ingredients for musical magic. Through the Children’s Music Workshop, he teaches flute and recorder at Palisades Elementary. Through his own studio, The Alper Music School, he teaches all levels on six instruments, along with composition and improvisation.   When he went into teaching fulltime in 2000, Alper was determined that music must be fun, notwithstanding that he considers himself a focused and disciplined person. ‘My challenge is to be able to express a concept so that an individual will understand it. I teach to the person, which leads to a path of style, theory, improvisation and history.’   One telling lesson for his students involves truly hearing the music, not just listening. ‘I often ask students to sing what they have heard, to see whether they can hear the music,’ Alper explains. ‘Then you know that the music is living inside you if you can do this.’   Alper’s CD ‘Fat Doggie,’ featuring the Greg Alper Band, is available at Village Books on Swarthmore. Greg Alper in his home studio in Pacific Palisades. Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer By LIBBY MOTIKA Greg Alper never would have imagined that YouTube, the scrappy video-sharing Web site could have revived his signature 1978 jazz album, ‘Fat Doggie,’ which would lead to its re-mastering at Abbey Road Studios in London in 2010.   The tale is intriguing and a twist of fate, says the Pacific Palisades musician. ‘The album is a collector’s item that had lots of airplay in the ’70s,’ Alper says. ‘Some cuts had been uploaded to YouTube and were noticed by musicians from First Hand Records, Ltd., who produce music and a re-issue series.’   Alper’s band experimented with various forms of jazz fusion in the ’70s and ’80s. They created a new sound by interweaving jazz, Latin, funk, R&B and world beat rhythms into their original vocal and instrumental compositions.   For Alper, who has since enjoyed a career in film scoring and teaching, reviving the band’s ’70’s recording was a highlight of his life, bringing back memories of his unbridled performing days in New York.   He went to London to oversee the project, and was thrilled to be in one of the most famous studios in the world, most notable for being the venue in the 1960s for innovative recording techniques adopted by the Beatles, Pink Floyd and others.   ’I liked the classic electronics, the old mixing consoles,’ Alper reminisces, even though his album was re-mastered using the latest digital technology. ‘In the old days, the engineers all wore white jackets.’   ’Fat Doggie’ features Richie Morales (drums), who also played with Spyro Gyra, the Brecker Brothers and Ray Baretto; Chuck Loeb (guitar), musical director for Stan Getz; Ray Anderson (trombone, vocal), named Best Trombone by Downbeat five years in a row; and Alper, wailing on the tenor and soprano sax.   For 50 years, the saxophone has been companion, therapist and inspiration for Alper. The first time he heard John Coltrane’s signature album ‘A Love Supreme’ in the early ’70s, it changed his life.   ’I had a dream that night in which these giant saxophones came at me. I awoke the next morning and vowed that I was going to be a sax player.’ Thankfully for Alper, his epiphany hadn’t occurred at a bullfight or Indy race.   A student at Indiana University, he soon was possessed by the instrument and explored the colors and capabilities of the hybrid horn, halfway between the woodwinds and brass.   He buckled down with the sax, practicing 16 hours of day, taking time off only for class and sleep. He found that the versatility of the horn, thought to be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds and the most adaptive of the brass, suited his emotional temperament.   Alper, who has lived in the Palisades with his wife Sonja for over 20 years, has been immersed in music his entire life. He taught himself piano by listening. ‘I was composing at 6 on the piano and then on the guitar, and by 12, I was performing in clubs around Chicago [his hometown].’   There was a time in college’a memorable week when ‘a friend invited me to jam with a bunch of guys, and we just holed up in his house. It was great.’ After graduating from Indiana in 1975 with a creatively sculpted B.A. in arts (an independent major in music and experimental tape), Alper decamped for New York. ‘This was at a time when there was a willingness and availability for great music and an eagerness to entertain,’ he says. He worked on developing styles and interpretations and performed several nights a week at dance clubs, such as Broadway Charlie’s, and Prescott’s in the West Village.   ’One of the bands I played with had a three-month gig at the Village Gate. We opened for Charles Mingus, Dizzy, Art Blakey, Stanley Turentine. So I would hear these guys play five nights a week and learned a lot. ‘I even sat down with Rashid Ali [John Coltrane’s drummer] a couple of times.’   And then he put together the Greg Alper Band of extraordinary talents that for a brief time was magical.   He kept the band going, but gradually the personnel left, so Alper segued into writing for other instruments. ‘I started writing for industrial films, commercials and films, eventually moving to Los Angeles in 1989. He scored over 100 films, including a song for ‘Random Hearts’ with Harrison Ford, and for computer games, most notably ‘War Craft.’   L.A. turned out to be more difficult to crack than he had hoped, so ‘in order to survive, I started teaching.’   To listen to Alper talk about his work with students, from ages 4 to 80, offers insights into the ingredients for musical magic. Through the Children’s Music Workshop, he teaches flute and recorder at Palisades Elementary. Through his own studio, The Alper Music School, he teaches all levels on six instruments, along with composition and improvisation.   When he went into teaching fulltime in 2000, Alper was determined that music must be fun, notwithstanding that he considers himself a focused and disciplined person. ‘My challenge is to be able to express a concept so that an individual will understand it. I teach to the person, which leads to a path of style, theory, improvisation and history.’   One telling lesson for his students involves truly hearing the music, not just listening. ‘I often ask students to sing what they have heard, to see whether they can hear the music,’ Alper explains. ‘Then you know that the music is living inside you if you can do this.’   Alper’s CD ‘Fat Doggie,’ featuring the Greg Alper Band, is available at Village Books on Swarthmore.

Charles Pasternak, Jack Leahy and Edward Castuera were out-of-work actors just a few years out of Palisades High when they got together at a party in 2006 and, slightly inebriated, decided to stage one of William Shakespeare’s plays.   They didn’t intend to form a theater company, just put up a single play.   ’We knew it would be a huge, fun, catastrophic success or failure,’ Pasternak recalls.   Calling themselves the Porters of Hellsgate, they produced ‘Julius Caesar,’ making just enough money to consider doing another show. Less than five years later, the company now has 11 Shakespearean plays to its credit.   Their 2011 season will open on February 20 with Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus the Tyrant,’ at the Sherry Theatre in North Hollywood.   In the famous Greek tragedy, Oedipus, whose terrible fate has been foretold by an oracle, sets out to find the source of a mysterious plague on his kingdom. Corpses burn all night, pregnant women can’t give birth, crops fail and cattle die. His search leads to shattering truths and his own ruin.   Pasternak, awarded ‘Shake-speare Performance of the Year’ by StageSceneLA for his work as Hamlet last year, will play Oedipus.   The name of the fledgling company comes from the words of a drunken doorkeeper at Macbeth’s castle in ‘the Scottish play.’   ’Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell gate, he should have old turning the key ‘ Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there ‘ I pray you, remember the porter.’   Beyond offering a memorable tagline and a sufficiently cool name, the image of a ‘drunken man standing at the gates of hell appealed to us,’ says Pasternak, who describes the founding group as ‘all young, poor artists on the verge ‘ striving to do something really big.’   The group lacks a home theater. ‘The idea of having the amount of money to do that is almost unfathomable,’ says Pasternak, who is also the company’s artistic director.   It helps that the Bard’s work can be staged with very little in the way of props and costumes.   ’That’s part of the beauty of Shakespeare,’ Pasternak says. ‘His plays stand on the language.’   ’I’m a minimalist anyway,’ adds Alex Parker, the company’s managing director. Parker, like four of the five members of the current production team, is also an actor, and often learns his lines while building sets.   But the lack of money doesn’t stifle the team’s creativity. This production will be the world premiere of a blank-verse translation of the fifth-century story (more popularly known as ‘Oedipus the King’) by Jamey Hecht, Ph.D., published in his ‘Three Theban Plays.’   ’Almost every line spoken by or about Oedipus in this drama has a double or even a triple meaning,’ says Hecht in the introduction to his book.   The production team has incorporated eclectic costuming (constructed by Jessica Pasternak, Charles’ mom), a five-woman chorus and Japanese Butoh-inspired dance (choreographed by company member Taylor Fisher) into the classic tragedy. Thomas Bigley will direct.   The aim is to produce something that appeals to a contemporary sensibility while maintaining the work’s deep connection to the past.   ’You can hear and feel just how old it is,’ Parker says. ‘Jamey went the extra mile in trying to dedicate himself to Sophocles’ original words, yet it’s strikingly modern in its delivery.’   Parker and Gus Krieger, another PaliHi grad, will both take on small, but very pivotal parts in Oedipus’ downfall, as a messenger and shepherd, respectively. Castuera and Leahy are now executive directors of the company.   The company plans to stage two Shakespeare offerings and one more original work this year.   ’There have been three or four shows where if the show flopped, the company was over, [but] we’re slowly getting our wits about us in terms of surviving in this community,’ Pasternak says.   The members rely on other acting and writing gigs along with the typical assortment of actors’ ‘day jobs,’ including working in restaurants, as a personal assistant and as a pet sitter.   It’s all worth it.   Pasternak believes that ‘the communion of live theater [is] vitally necessary to a city’s cultural and artistic well-being,’ but worries because ‘we’re living in this electronic age where everything is a click away. People don’t even have to leave their computers to watch a million movies now.’   Parker agrees, worrying aloud that they’re going against the grain in ‘a city that sometimes seems to have given up on live performance.’   ’We want there to be a place to see Shakespeare, we want to perform Shakespeare and we want the city to have a place to come and see it,’ Pasternak says. ‘I think there is a place for that. I think that if we do our jobs, they will come.’   ’Oedipus the Tyrant’ will open at 7 p.m. on February 20 at The Sherry Theatre, 11052 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, and run through March 13. Future Friday and Saturday performances are at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. On the final weekend, there will be two shows each on Saturday (8 and 10 p.m.) and Sunday (2 and 7 p.m.). For tickets ($15-$20), go to brownpapertickets.com/event/149704, call (818) 325-2055 or e-mail portersofhellsgate@gmail.com.

  In 1938, Tony Cornero decided to open a shipboard gaming operation off the Southern California coast. Anchored in international waters, Cornero would be able to run his gambling dens without interference from U.S. authorities.   Ernest Marquez takes up the story of Cornero, the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex, in his new book ‘Noir Afloat,’ which he will discuss on Tuesday, February 15 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore.   Cornero purchased two large ships and converted them into luxury casinos at a cost of $300,000. He named the ships the SS Rex and the SS Tango. His premier cruise ship, the Rex, accommodated over 2,000 gamblers. It carried a crew of 350, including waiters and waitresses, gourmet chefs, a full orchestra, and a squad of gunmen. Its first-class dining room served French cuisine exclusively.   The two ships were anchored outside the three-mile limit off Santa Monica and Long Beach. The wealthy of Los Angeles would take water taxis out to the ships to enjoy the gambling, shows and restaurants.   In October 1939, the Los Angeles Zoo was facing a financial crisis. Always the good citizen, Cornero offered the zoo a day’s proceeds from the SS Rex. Considering that his ships were earning $300,000 a cruise, this was no idle gesture. Although zoo officials seriously considered the offer, pressure from state politicians forced them to decline it. The success of Cornero’s floating casinos brought outrage from California officials. State Attorney General Earl Warren ordered a series of raids against his gambling ships. On May 4, 1946, after Warren became governor of California, he issued a public statement declaring his intentions to shut down gambling ships outside California waters. Warren said he intended ‘to call the Navy and Coast Guard if necessary.’ During his address, Warren specifically denounced the newly built gambling ship owned by ‘Admiral’ Tony Cornero, and stated ‘It’s an outrage that lumber should be used for such a gambling ship, when veterans can’t get lumber with which to build their homes.’ Despite battles with authorities over the legality of their entering international waters, the State of California found a way to circumvent the three-mile limit by refiguring its starting point and determining the that ships were indeed in California waters. Without wasting any time, police boarded several U.S. Coast Guard craft and sailed out to Cornero’s ships to close them down and arrest Cornero. Reportedly, Cornero turned the ship’s fire hoses on the police when they attempted to board and declared they were committing ‘piracy on the high seas.’ A three-day standoff ensued before Cornero finally surrendered. The book represents 30 years of research by best-selling Southern California author Ernest Marquez, whose collection of images and memorabilia is showcased in ‘Noir Afloat.’ Marquez was born and grew up in Santa Monica Canyon on what remains of Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, the Mexican land grant awarded to his great-grandfathers in 1839. His research for ‘Noir Afloat’ is an extension of his groundbreaking work for his bestselling book, ‘Santa Monica Beach.’ While exhaustively researching primary sources, he began collecting original photographs, stereoviews and memorabilia, which now comprise the Ernest Marquez Collection.

  Ghanaian reggae star Rocky Dawuni’s new album, ‘Hymns for the Rebel Soul,’ has been nominated for a prestigious NAACP Image Award for”Outstanding World Music Album.”   Since its release in May 2010, the album has received praise and extensive radio play for various’tracks on the album. ‘African Reggae Fever’ and ‘Download the Revolution’ were subsequently featured on the ‘FIFA World Cup’ and ‘FIFA Soccer 2010’ video games that have sold millions worldwide.   Dawuni, a Pacific Palisades resident, also graced various stages around the world in 2010, including the Vatican-sponsored ‘JOSPFest’ in Rome, ‘WE Day’ in Canada and the recent ‘Freedom Awards’ with Jason Mraz.’   Also nominated in the’same category are ‘Oyo’ (Angelique Kidjo), ‘The Imagine Project” (Herbie Hancok), ‘The Sound of Sunshine’ (Michael Franti) and ‘VOCAbularies’ by Bobby McFerrin.   The 42nd NAACP Image Awards, featuring 53 categories in the fields of motion picture, television, recording and literature, will be held on March 4.   The album is available at itunes and www.rockydawuni.com.