The River City Brass Band brought the Patrick Sheridan show to Oakland's Carnegie Music Hall Thursday night.

As guest conductor and tuba soloist, Sheridan led the band in a very lively, exciting and nuanced RCBB performance. Like a confident driver steering a speeding sports car with one finger, Sheridan conducted with an understated touch. The RCBB's response was a stellar opening to its 2009-10 concert season.

The theme of the band's opening concerts, "And the Band Played On," was a poignant reference to the RCBB's financial struggles and the absence of longtime conductor Denis Colwell. Typical of a RCBB program, this opener was stylistically broad, including arrangements from Broadway, Hollywood, opera and the circus tent. The band's ability to convincingly portray the various styles so early in the concert season proved it is already in top form.

Of the many musical high points, the most memorable were the performances of two selections from Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story." The band's percussion section, led by Richard Parsons, drove the ensemble through the signature hemiolas in the Latin-groove-based "America." A heartfelt and well-paced rendition of "Somewhere" followed. Sheridan and company found the delicate balance between this song's elegiac mourning for the loss of a brother and its hopeful anticipation of a better place.

Principal euphonium Mathew Murchison showed an impressive display of technical prowess. Murchison's performance of "Variations on a Tyrolean Theme," a tour-de-force for any brass instrument, displayed his laudable ability to maintain a clear musical purpose through the audacious technical calisthenics this piece required. Murchison and Sheridan worked seamlessly to maintain a convincing ebb and flow to the work's temporal pacing. This resulted in their achieving a breathing quality to the piece that is rarely heard but always needed.

Drew Fennell's performance of Erroll Garner's "Misty" was equally strong. Fennell played his flugelhorn with a silky tone and excellent pitch. He drew out the tune's long phrases with amazing breath control. Sheridan brought out the different colors in the well-orchestrated arrangement, especially by finding the "comping piano player" hidden within the accompanying trombone section.

The concert's exuberant finale, "El Cumbanchero," brought the audience to its feet and calling for more, which it got -- an encore performance of the "Armed Forces Medley."

The program repeats tomorrow at 3 p.m. at Baldwin High School.