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Our concert is tomorrow!! Apparently there has been some confusion with the ticket website. For a while it was indicating that our concert was sold out but there are still tickets available! Everything should be okay now but you can always call the JACCC box office directly and there will be tickets available at the door.

We had a great run through tonight and we’re really excited about tomorrow’s performance. As a special treat we’ll have some pre-release copies of our new album “Ume in the Middle” available at the concert!

We had a great time performing at the Oceanside Public Library’s 2008 World Music Series! It was a great sounding theater and a great audience. A big thank you goes out to Kristine, Deborah and the Friend’s of the Oceanside Public Library for their help in bringing us to their community.

Also thank you to everybody who came out to see our performance. It was especially nice to see members of UCSD Asayake Taiko at the performance. We connected with Asayake Taiko at the Collegiate Taiko Invitational this year. On Ensemble was paired with Asayake Taiko for a master class session and we were particularly impressed with their energy and eagerness to learn and improve. Also a shout out to Stanford Taiko’s Elle who keeps showing up at On Ensemble events this summer!

Stanford Taiko went on a massive three week tour with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford CHamber Chorale, Stanford Choral Union and the St. Lawrence String Quartet early this summer. Stories and pictures from the tour are featured in this month’s Stanford Magazine. How cool is that? I know I’m starting to sound like an old man but back when Kris and I were in Stanford Taiko there were no international tours and we had to haul drums 300 feet in the cold California winters just to practice…

Our next performance is Saturday, September 13th at 7:30pm in Oceanside, CA. We’ll be part of the Oceanside Public Library’s World Music Series. We’ll be performing a full concert program at the Sunshine Brooks Theater located 217 North Coast Highway, Oceanside, CA 92054.

Thanks to the sponsorship by the Friends of the Oceanside Public Library, tickets are only $15 each for all ages. Due to limited seating at the theatres, advance ticket purchase is strongly recommended. Tickets can be purchased at the Civic Center Library or Mission Branch Library checkout desks. Free parking is available next door to the Civic Center Library in the Civic Center Parking Garage. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; open seating (only). Performance time is 7:30 p.m.

It’s not everyday you get a call in the morning to perform with Stevie Wonder at the Democratic National Convention and by the end of the day find yourself at Wonderland Studios rehearsing with the legend. Crazy… I need to pinch myself.

Anyways… I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll be heading to Denver next week for the Democratic National Convention! Woohoo!

Back in 2004 I got to go to the Boston convention with Hiroshima got stuck in an underground parking lot for three hours and we all know how that election turned out. It was also the tour that I lost my job as primary navigator… Heading back to the hotel from dinner I missed the hotel exit four times in a row and the worst part about it was that every time I missed the exit we had to pay a toll! That was the last time I got to be band navigator. Now we have a GPS instead.

Maybe in 2012 On Ensemble will be famous enough to get invited to perform at a DNC! We’ll have to win a grammy first, so there is still work to be done, but we might as well aim high! More later…