Youth Orchestra of Salinas delivers big heart and bigger sound with special winter show.

Michael Gomez always thought his clear-as-a-bell tenor voice and substantial musical knowledge base would land him a job as a stage performer. But that was before he ran into Youth Orchestra of Salinas in 2014. “I never saw myself doing a nonprofit or anything remotely like this,” Gomez says. “Now I don’t really see myself doing anything else.”

From its humble beginnings in 2010, YOSAL has now grown to serve some 250 students from 25 different schools across four Salinas school districts. It is patterned afterEl Sistema, a model of social change through music education founded in 1975 by Venezuelan music educator and social activist José Antonio Abreu. YOSAL now offers K-12 student musicians a tuition-free, year-round after-school program that includes transport, snacks, homework help and stellar music instruction by professional musicians, with the opportunity to perform.

The group offers two major concerts a year, and returns this week for their winter show with a diverse program including classical selections from Fantasia by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Saint-Saens, works by Ponchielli and Mussorgsky and even a stab at Igor Stravinsky’s masterwork The Rite of Spring. But the centerpiece of this outing will be the world premiere of Gathering The Sun, a symphonic, post-modern style work for choir and orchestra by CSUMB music professor Lanier Sammons. Based upon text from Alma Flor Ada’s book of poems of the same name, the verse celebrates migrant farm workers, their families, the fields, diversity and Mother Nature herself: “Not one flower but many/ Each with a different smell/ Not one fruit but many/ Each with a different flavor/ Not one tree/ But a hundred different shades of green/ Together… / Together… / On this planet.”

Gomez finds the composition’s naturalistic bent to be quite interesting. “There are moments when singers and the orchestra reproduce sounds of nature, like wind and rain, thunder and lightning,” he says. He goes on to spotlight the ever-increasing amount of YOSAL success stories. “There’s a lot of hard work that goes into what we do behind the scenes,” he says, “but ultimately it’s seeing the changes in outlook from students who maybe weren’t that way when they first got involved with us.

“I just love the idea that our students will carry these positive memories and the power of music with them for the rest of their lives,” he continues, “whether they become professional musicians or not.”

YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF SALINAS WINTER CONCERT 6:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 14. Fox Theater, 241 Main St., Salinas. Free, donations welcome. 756-5335, yosal.org