"Yes!" percussionist Mike Kizzar, a high school student from Danville, said after the orchestra finished. "I love that song."

Excited chatter ensued among the squeak of violin bows resting against strings.

That excitement is what differentiates youth orchestras from professional ones, said resident Oakland Youth Orchestra conductor Bryan Nies.

"There is a real vigor about the way they approach music that doesn't happen with professional orchestras," he said.

Desperate to learn and learn well, the young adults bring an unmatched enthusiasm to the orchestra experience, he added.

The 75 members of the Oakland Youth Orchestra will showcase that talent during their winter concert Sunday in Alameda.

The concert gives orchestra members the chance to play for the public what they've been rehearsing for months. And it gives the public a chance to feel the excitement of live music from a mixture of classical instruments, such as the oboe, French horn, harp, flute and piccolo.

Established in 1964 by the former Oakland Symphony, the Oakland Youth Orchestra has won several performance honors including several Authors and Publishers' Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music awards.

The group is led by artistic director Michael Morgan, musical director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Festival Opera in Walnut Creek and the Sacramento Philharmonic.

Morgan said the youth orchestra is special because it has gone to great lengths to recruitand promote young musicians of all cultural backgrounds.

That wasn't always the case. When Morgan began his tenure as orchestra director in 1996, music programs in the Oakland schools had diminished, and very few orchestra members were Oakland residents, he said.

Today, 17-year-old violinist Danielle Taylor is the Oakland Youth Orchestra's concertmaster, having learned her skill in the Oakland public schools.

She has spent five years in the orchestra and said she dreamed of being concertmaster her first year. And even though the weekly practices take four hours out of her schedule, she loves being in the orchestra.

"It's so fun," she said, shyly.

In addition to three annual local performances, the group goes on tour often, most recently to Australia and New Zealand last year. Throughout the year and on tour they form bonds that often last lifetimes, said Ben Simon, an Oakland Youth Orchestra violinist and concertmaster from 1970 to 1972.

"The friends I still have from the'70s are the friends I had from the orchestra," he said.

Simon, an Oakland resident, continued playing music after his tenure in the orchestra. He went on to be a member of World String Quartet and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is now the conductor of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra.

Not everyone who has picked up a flute during childhood is qualified to be a member of the ensemble, whose musicians range from 12 to 22 years old. After applying for a seat in the orchestra in June, the musicians must perform in front of a team of judges, who rate them on musicianship, maturity and how well they interact with others.

When they finally take their seats in the crowded Laney College music room, they are treated as professionals and expected to perform as such.

"They get to interact with adults they admire, and they are held accountable," Executive Director Barbara Stack said.

The group will be performing Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Overture and Suites, Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8,

"Unfinished" and Franz von Suppe's Poet and Pleasant Overture at the Sunday concert.

The event will be held at 3 p.m. in the Kofman Auditorium of Alameda High School, 2200 Central Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $12 for adults and $8 for senior and students.

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