Long Island teens prepped and ready for Carnegie Hall close-up

They have practiced, practiced, practiced and now three of Long Island’s top student musicians are going to Carnegie Hall.

Double bassist Joshua Lee, 15, a rising sophomore at Locust Valley’s Portledge School, from Great Neck; violinist Yuuki Donnelly, 15, a rising junior at Rocky Point High School from Rocky Point; and oboist Kaitlyn Choi, 18, the Harvard-bound Jericho Senior High School valedictorian from Jericho, will all play the historic venue in coming days.

The Long Islanders were among 2,000 teenage musicians from across the United States who auditioned this year for fewer than 200 spots in the historic venue’s two youth orchestras.

Choi will play Monday night with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, a group of musicians between the ages of 16 and 19, created by Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall’s artistic and executive director. The orchestra will then embark on a tour of South America

Lee and Donnelly will play this Thursday night with the National Youth Orchestra 2, a group for classical musicians ranging in age from 14 to 17.

The concerts are part of Carnegie Hall’s inaugural World Orchestra Week — also known by its snappier acronym, WOW! — which has drawn hundreds of high-level musicians in youth ensembles from around the world for a series of concerts scheduled to continue through Aug. 7. Tickets start at $25.

"I’ve learned so much, just from the amount of exposure I’ve gotten," Lee said Wednesday. "It shows you how much it takes to be like a professional musician … It’s hard, but the result is so rewarding. I feel like we have meshed together as a group, we can call ourselves one with the amount of trust we put in each other."

The global group of young musicians have spent the past two weeks in residence at SUNY Purchase, practicing five to seven hours a day under tutelage of musicians and conductors from professional symphonies across North America.

In concert boot camp, Lee, who has been playing since he was 4 years old, said he had found comradery among like-minded young bass players.

"I think I’d been missing out on for my entire life," he said. "My school is really small, so no one plays bass, but here there are people who play and work hard at it as much as I do."

Two of his three roommates in the residency were also bassists, he said.

"The other night we were up until 1 a.m. talking about bass. We’re talking and talking and you don’t realize how much time goes by."

Lee said he sometimes plays before an audience of about 50 with his high school orchestra.

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, where he will perform Thursday night, seats 2,790. Lee had nerves — "I always get nervous," he said — but it felt good to be part of a team. "If you miss a note, it doesn’t matter, because they’ll carry you back in, they’ll cue you back."

Sarah Johnson, Carnegie Hall’s chief education officer, said the orchestras offer an experience for young musicians far different from professional ensembles, who might play together for decades.

"It’s immersive and it’s intense," Johnson said. "They come together quite quickly, because they’re mostly incredibly passionate about making music. They’re so excited to be in this peer group that shares their passions and interest, sometimes it’s hard to get them to stop playing."

Marin Alsop, the longtime Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor who is set to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic next year, will lead Monday’s youth concert.

"For all of us, when we’re young, when you do something for the first time, it’s a huge experience and it makes an enormous impression," Alsop said. None of her young charges had heard a live version of "Barber’s Symphony No. 1," which they will perform Monday, she said. "It’s like being reconnected with our passion for why we became musicians when we were young people," she said. "You can’t not do it."

Donnelly, playing violin for a second year in Orchestra 2, said he relished the chance to play under professional musicians and conductors. There was less focus on hitting notes — at their level everybody can do that, he said — and more on "the musicality side to music … They give ideas and inspiration on expressiveness, but they’re also open to different interpretations."

Choi, readying for Carnegie Hall and then a multicity tour of South America playing oboe with the National Youth Orchestra, said it was natural to "get a little bit of stage fright, to be nervous for our first performance. But every single time we run through we get more comfortable, and it starts to flow so well."

Correction: Two-thousand teenage musicians auditioned for the Carnegie Hall youth orchestras. An earlier version of this story misstated the number.