Island tunes

The Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka has been playing for more than 50 years

The night is warm and there is no air-conditioning - but on a Saturday evening in December, the hall of a central Colombo school is crammed with expectant crowds.

Tickets have been sold out for days. Concert-goers fill the space for the Christmas concert of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka (SOSL). A striking number are young.

A few who have turned up on the night manage to get returned tickets and conductor Eshantha Peiris embarks on the programme including Bach, Handel, Bizet, Lennon and McCartney, Franz von Suppe - and sing-along carols.

“This is the only big orchestra we have in our country so it's a great privilege to be in it”

Dushy Perera Orchestra member

At 25, Eshantha is a lot younger than the orchestra. It gave its first concert in 1958 under a Sri Lankan musician, Hussein Mohamed. It remains an important focus of a thriving Western classical music scene in Colombo performed mainly by Sri Lankans and rarely seen by tourists.

Eshantha is one of four main conductors, all of whom also play in the orchestra when not conducting. He is a violinist and also an accomplished and versatile pianist.

"It's a very democratically-run process," he told the BBC during rehearsals.

"When I was studying to be a pianist [at New York University] I also took a few conducting courses.

"I did discover I enjoyed the conducting and here it's something that not many people do, so I feel like it's something that I could give to the orchestra," he said.

A fair number of Sri Lankans go abroad to further their musical studies and many do well overseas. Eshantha could have done the same but instead has returned.

"One reason there are not many professional musicians in the orchestra is because there aren't that many professional musicians in the country.

Eshantha Peiris studied abroad but chose to return home

"The ones who do go to study, they tend to stay on in countries where they can get regular work. So here it tends to be amateurs who do it because they love playing the music," he said.

Leroy Anderson's Buglers' Holiday - a polished American showpiece - gives three trumpeters the chance to display their solo skills.

Some of the wind and brass players come from Sri Lankan military and police bands.

Ajit Abeysekera, though, is a professor of chemistry and has played clarinet in the SOSL for 40 years - since an era when the country was still called Ceylon and had not experienced war.

He says they reach out to the