Playing the violin on stage.

On the first day of February, the music school in Mamoudzou held its second classical concert.

We'd managed to bring together quite the orchestra, with different - complementary - instruments, and different nationalities.

One of the violinists was French, the other was Mexican. The violist was Greek and the cellist Swedish. Clarinetist and trumpeter were French, the girl on the recorder was English and the lad on the piano and organ was an Algerian Jew. We also had a couple of pupils from the school who had been dying to play with "the professionals". The girl on the trumpet was a pupil, who really needed that concert to push up her self-esteem because she had been having a lot of problems at school. The lad on the bongo drums was the clarinetist's son... we could have given that job to a professional drummer, as there is one teaching in the music school, but may as well give it to a young'un if there's one available. And finally, there's an apprentice pianist who's clamouring to play in the next concert.

The whole concert went pretty well, really. Over 200 entries, which is enormous for such an event (classical concert) in such a place (church) in such a country (Muslim). A few glaring mistakes here and there, the sort that you cringe over because you know the piece but probably wouldn't even notice otherwise. A bright-red trumpeter and a recorder player who was having trouble walking in her new dress. That sort of thing. Several of my colleagues and friends were in the audience, and they all said that they had found the concert too short. We actually skipped part of the programme to keep it short, deliberately, because there's nothing worse than yawning away during a too-long classical concert, looking at the programme and realizing you're only half-way through.

I love playing in concerts.