Orange County is the birthplace of a number of national headliners—No Doubt, Cold War Kids, Sublime, The Offspring and Social Distortion. The local talent pool also includes the SMART Jazz Execs, J.T. and Friends and High Octane Alpha, whose founders skipped the rebellious-youth stage in favor of building successful careers outside of music, but never quite gave up on the dream.
Chances are they won’t have groupies or sell a band T-shirt, and that’s OK—they turn to music to relieve stress, stir up creative juices, and help raise money for worthy causes along the way.
“Music is one of the few things that literally gets my mind completely off of work,” said Alejandro Angulo, a partner at Rutan & Tucker LLP in Costa Mesa who specializes in intellectual property litigation.
“If you’re passionate about what you do, you’re constantly thinking about it, because it’s important to you, and music allows me to let that go. It’s kind of like what sleep does to your body … it allows me to approach my job and my clients’ complicated problems with fresh eyes or a fresh mind.”
Angulo plays bass for SMART Jazz Execs, a 15-member jazz group he founded in 2013. His bandmates include Orange County Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Glass, who plays the guitar; David Harshman, general counsel at Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. in Irvine, on electric bass; and Brent Triff, in-house counsel at Western Digital Corp.’s Irvine office, who plays drums and saxophone.
The band performs a couple of times a month at various legal events, including the Orange County Bar Association’s Judges’ Night, the Lavender Bar Association summer party, and the Veterans Legal Institute gala.
They play for charitable contributions put in an account they maintain at the Orange County Community Foundation that benefits music programs for children. The model, which nets about $20,000 a year, eases some of the performance jitters musicians may feel during a paid engagement, and also provides opportunities to network with potential clients.
“No one can say anything negative when you’re volunteering your time playing music, raising money for underprivileged kids in Orange County,” Angulo said. He indicated that the jazz band sometimes performs at “very exclusive events” where during set breaks he gets to mingle with members of the audience, “which builds credibility.”
Angulo said, “There’s a lot of really good lawyers in Orange County that are just as good as me. And the question becomes, why do people hire me instead of somebody else? And for some, it’s important that they hire and do business with somebody that cares about the community. I’ve chosen to sort of go down that path, and it’s important for me to give back, irrespective of my business—I just think that that’s something you should do. But the consequences of that has been that people view me as a sort of honest, giving guy.”
J.T. and Friends
Kingston Technology Inc. co-founder John Tu is also known in nonprofit circles, both as a performer and a donor. His privately held consumer electronics maker took in an estimated $6.7 billion in revenue last year.
The 45-member J.T. and Friends ensemble of horns, strings, woodwinds, keyboards, percussion and vocalists, meets for practice at one of the company’s three buildings in Fountain Valley. Tu’s an avid drummer who’s performed with the band at numerous fundraising events throughout OC, most notably at annual galas of PBS SoCal and the Pacific Symphony.
Tu grew up in China, and moved to Taiwan with his family when he was a teen. He was turned on to rock music by listening to a radio station for U.S. soldiers stationed there in the 1950s that played songs by Elvis Presley.
“I was amazed, I said ‘What kind of music is this? I’m not even sure I like it, but it’s exciting, and it’s very strange,’” he recalled during a recent interview. “I asked a friend of mine, ‘Listen to this—this is music,’ and he was fascinated.”
They decided to form a band and imitate the songs they heard on the G.I.’s radio. Tu got his first drum set from an ensemble that was about to throw its away, while his friend David “somewhere got himself a guitar.”
“We didn’t know what we were singing,” he said. “We were proud it sounded like English … David and I were the first rock-and-roll band in Taiwan.”
When asked if he was referring to Kingston co-founder David Sun, Tu laughed and said, “Not this David—this David is tone-deaf—forget it. He has no talent.”
Tu continued to play until he turned 17, when his father came into his room and said, “Your report card is terrible, so no more drums.”
His next encounter with the instrument came years later, when his wife, Mary, bought him a set for the home.
Shortly after, he formed a small band that’s grown into a full orchestra over the years.
“I can’t imagine [my life] without playing music again—I’ll go crazy if I don’t have that,” he said, adding that he still gets butterflies just before a performance. Then he’ll hear the conductor count to three, and “boom, everything is gone, and what you feel is, ‘What the heck, I’m here already, no way to back out.’”
Music also helped Tu connect with fellow musicians in the business world and break down stereotypes—not many expect him to be a drummer or to be part of a sizable group that plays rock and Motown music.
“When I go to Europe, to Asia to [meet] customers, I think I’m a little shy,” he said. “So when they find out that I play music, they ask, ‘What kind of music?’ and when I say it’s rock-and-roll, they’re very, very surprised. And then they have this image of three guys together, just jamming a little bit, until they find out it’s an orchestra. It’s always good to surprise people.”
He’s a firm believer that anyone can take up music, and with practice achieve a decent skill level; anything beyond that has to be “in the blood.” Tu’s also aware of his own limitations and fellow band members’ talent.
“I cannot even tie their shoe laces because they’re just so good,” he said. At a summer concert in 2015, he was given a chance to conduct Pacific Symphony’s orchestra in a performance of Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. He thanked them for the opportunity but told them, “Don’t pay attention to me.”
The Alpha
Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co. Managing Director Alper Ince keeps a guitar at his office, picking it up from time to time on late afternoons or in the evenings.
The idea to form a band came from co-workers, head of Legal and Investment Structuring Charles Nightingale, and Associate Director John Paul Fischer—there was a Halloween contest to be won. Nightingale played keyboard and Fischer could sing, so they just needed a drummer.
“I went through the resumes of all the associates that we have hired and identified the drummer who was actually sitting across from me, David Barta,” Ince said, indicating he found the vital information under the hobbies portion of Barta’s resume.
Ince took the band’s name, High Octane Alpha, from Irvine-based Paamco’s “alpha generating hedge fund strategies,” and the fact that “high octane also implies that it’s more like rock music.”
The band’s repertoire includes songs by Queen, Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses and Pink Floyd.
“After the contest, we said, ‘We’ll perform two or three more songs if you guys like it,’” Ince said of the Halloween party gig. “People liked it a lot, and the rest is history.”
Last year they performed at the Hedge Fund Rocktoberfest in New York and Chicago, the annual fundraiser for children’s charity A Leg To Stand On. They headlined in March at Muldoon’s Irish Pub in Newport Beach and have a scheduled appearance at Whiskey a Go Go in West Hollywood on April 28.
“It’s a very legendary place—The Doors, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin—all those guys played there back in the day,” he said. “I’m excited.”
Progressive rock, which makes up the bulk of its repertoire, is “quite sophisticated music, with very complex arrangements” that requires discipline to “make it perfect over time or close to perfection,” he said, adding that practicing pushes his boundaries and improves his creative skills for working in the financial markets.
Ince played a mean guitar solo for Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” at Rocktoberfest in New York. When asked if he’s ever thought about pursuing a career as a full-time musician, he responded without hesitation. “It probably crossed my mind while I was very young, but my big passion is just really the financial industry.”
