The beauty of the sound, the quality of the tone. If this is nailed, the simplest melody moves people - if not, cadenzas and arias remain exercises. Call it soul. It's fundamental, too obvious. So how come beautiful tone is so rare? When were we last dazzled simply by a musician's sound?

For me it was last night, on Sunday, November 4th, at a concert entitled 'Music From The New World' at the PJ Civic Centre. When the orchestra started tuning, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end - the tone was incredible. That was the tuning! And then it started playing! It performed the theme from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Waltz, and the theme from The Bridge On the River Kwai. Unbelievable. I could talk about the faultless pitching (not to be taken for granted hereabouts), the lack of wrong notes (ditto), the focus of the musicians. But to the point - it was exhilarating, soul-stirring music. How do you describe 50-odd musicians, each with a wonderful singing tone, really putting out?

The stage held an unbearably cute collection of mini instruments – cellos the size of violins, a baby harp - and instrumentalists whose legs dangled from their chairs. This was the Junior Orchestra of the KL Symphony Orchestra, led by Ms Ann Perreau, comprising children of 5 years and above. These kids didn't play The Flight of the Bumblebee on the double bass in 5 keys. It wasn't that sort of virtuoso show. But it was a huge achievement - not merely by kiddie or local standards. The orchestra produced sound which remained glorious even in the loud and more difficult bits. Nobody squawked, nobody grated. Everybody sang.

This musicianship is an amazing thing to be able to teach somebody. To teach it to a whole orchestra - that is a miracle. I never thought I would see this in Malaysia. Our tradition pitches the odds against a good orchestra: our teaching is syllabus-oriented, we lack an orchestral tradition, and klentong tunings are the norm, in time honoured P. Ramlee tradition. Against this background, Ann Perreau's children are being taught musicianship. Generalising wildly, this is the sort of music making that I miss even as I marvel at the Yamaha and Suzuki trained prodigies. I was unaccountably weeping like an idiot the whole way through. What can I say - it was very lovely music.

Ann Perreau is a charismatic woman whose Music Studio in PJ's Right Angle has taught classical music to children for 15 years. Her school is known for its unconventional but effective approach to music education, with its students regularly winning places in and scholarships to specialist music schools abroad. The optimal age to begin is at 4 and a half. Most students learn 2 or 3 instruments. I'd been told by friends that the emphasis is on fun, yet the academic results are spectacular.

"We are a school of hugs!" she said, when I asked her about her teaching approach. "We teach children to appreciate the quality of the sound they are making. To be musically clever all round. Not just to read and play."

When she takes her students abroad for auditions, the other children follow, and go to concerts and visit prestigious music schools, "to see that they know just as much as the children there."

It seems obvious that if a kid is having fun, he/she'll be more receptive to what's being taught. The music teacher as strict disciplinarian seems a quaintly old-fashioned notion compared to what Ann's school practices – why didn't anybody think of this in my day?!

Which is not to say there is no discipline: before the concert, I saw Ann tell some frisky boys to sit quietly, "or I'll come and kiss you." It worked!

I remember asking the inimitable Kees Bakels of the MPO how long he thought it would take before Malaysian orchestral musicians could have a more meaningful presence in the orchestra. He estimated thirty years (!). After the performance by Ann Perreau's students, I don't think so. Not by half.

What next? The Christmas concert. (Parents pleeeease take your kids - it might be life-changing!) Ann says that an idea next year is to have more frequent concerts, with all manner of ensembles - trios, quartets, a cappella groups. It would be exciting to team up the Junior Orchestra with the promising National Children's Choir, which did so well at the Carmina Burana concert at Istana Budaya about a year ago. Everything is possible, given the love, dedication and skill of Ann and her teachers.

The Junior Orchestra shared the programme with the KLSO, which played Handel's Fireworks Music, Dvorak's New World Symphony and P Ramlee's Getaran Jiwa in a rumba rhythm.