(Continuing the story...)

...but I've forgotten something fairly significant! A trip a few of us in Primary School made to Manchester's Bridgewater Hall to hear our Hallé orchestra perform Holst's The Planets. Significant, I think, because I believe it was the first classical concert I'd attended, or at least the first world-class orchestra I'd heard perform in front of me. Also, I only mentioned one performance I played at London's Royal Festival Hall in the previous part of the story: I have in fact performed there twice.

With that cleared up, I head into All Hallows High School, eager to learn the subject for which the school has a very good reputation, and meet Mr. Donaldson, my second and no less wonderful music teacher, who inspired me in the classroom, arranged a yearly Young Musician of the Year competition - in which I twice participated: first achieving third prize with Beethoven's piano piece "Für Elise" in Year Seven [first year]; and then achieving no prize for my rendition of Anonymous's Romance on the classical guitar in Year Eight - and Mr. Donaldson's crowning achievement (in the scheme of my life and personal development), arranging all of the music for, rehearsing and taking the whole school orchestra and drama group to Bad Bergzabern in Germany, and performing Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Joseph!. This, I think, is my most favourite and memorable musical extravaganza of my whole life. And doing a little hunt around just now, I've found the website for Bad Bergzabern's Gymnasium (site in German); and following the projekte link, and (without much hope of discovering anything too far into the past) hovering over the Musische und Sportprojekte image, I saw the words 'Musical "Joseph"' and clicking which was delivered to a new page with the fondly remembered logo for our very own production, with details of the dates and time on which we performed! And if you care to click on Team, and scroll down to the Orchester section, you'll see my name, Matthew Mascarenhas, next to Baßgitarre, and between the maths teacher Mr. Steven Cunningham and drum teacher Jamie Muncaster, with my old music teacher Mr. Andy Donaldson providing a perfect conclusion to the credits. It was, in fact, a music exchange program, and you can even see the name of my exchange partner, Monika Bösl, among the cellists. Photos there are, too; although none of myself personally. And all back in 1999 - what a blast from the past, eh?

Well, this was, as I say, my very favourite musical experience of my life, and still remains to be surpassed. In fact, looking through that list of people involved in that production, I see the name of my old friend Marc's sister Katherine Arrowsmith - I don't think I remember her being there; "Hallo, Katherine!". Oh, well. Those names, eh; they do bring back memories.

Indeed, after this production was replayed at our school in Macclesfield the following year (remembering now, in fact, Marc himself came to see it after he'd left to go to Harrytown, and I remember going and sitting next to him and his dad before the show began, with my Joseph! t-shirt on, delighted to see him back in the old place again, but still not making the connection with his sister - oh, well); yeah, after the replay in Macc, I believe my musical career began to take a downturn. Mr. Donaldson had retired, and the gaggle of buffoons who came to try and assume the role of 'Head of Music', or regular music teachers, couldn't do anywhere near so good a job, to the point that they couldn't be arsed teaching the course for my GCSEs because 'there were only four of us wanting to do it, and it wouldn't be worth putting it on'. So All Hallows's good reputation for music, it seems, was singularly the magnificent reputation of the one man, Mr. Donaldson, and with his retirement the whole department was in jeopardy. However, it wasn't an insurmountable problem, and I went to take my GCSE Music in one year, with the tutoring of John Pyatt, and achieved an A.

While doing all this, a few of us would take to going into the drum room on our break times, and fool about, teaching each other to play the drums (I even had a few [unofficial] pupils, would you believe?!), and making up various bits of music with the clavichord that was in there with the drum kit.

After all of this, however, I went to Aquinas College, deciding to take Music, Music Tech, Computing and Psychology, and came out of the whole thing with three D's for all but Music Tech, and an E in said subject at AS Level. A rousing failure, you will no doubt agree. However, a failure it wasn't entirely, for there I met my good friends Major and Andy Melnyk, as well as Ollie Cox with whom I played some music, and Dave Paul, now (and also then) of the wonderful band Laymar, with whom I also managed to play some music; Major with whom I am now beginning again to plan some amazing music making, and Andy with whom I now play in the Ukrainian band Yarema.

And I think that brings us just about up to the present. I have played in a couple of theatrical productions locally, and gone back to play some concerts with Mr. Brown since leaving all of my formal education, and am continuing quietly to make my own unintrusive music at home. The story will no doubt go on, but for now we must let time do its thing, and only wait to see what further musical extravaganzas it may bring.