The Pops adds some pop

Keith Lockhart had never heard of the rock band My Morning Jacket. But the Boston Pops conductor knows his audience. And over the years, it's been getting older and less willing to come to Symphony Hall.

So the Pops has booked My Morning Jack-et, along with onetime punk rocker Elvis Costello and brooding singer-songwriter AimeeMann. Tonight, Costello headlines the first Pops opener to sell out Symphony Hall in eight years. The new strategy continues later this month with the inaugural Pops Jazz Fest, which will feature crooning guitarist John Pizzarelli, sultry singer Jane Monheit, and groups of Berklee College of Music students jamming throughout the hall.

The programming changes have made an impression even on the performers.

''The Pops of old, you definitely thought of John Williams and the 'Theme to E.T.,' " said Mann, 45, who lived in Boston for nearly two decades before moving to Los Angeles. ''What they're doing now is making a concert somebody like me would actually want to see."

Pops management is quick to point out that the orchestra, still one of the best known in the country, isn't looking to abandon a core audience raised on Arthur Fiedler's programs and the many ''themed" music nights added in the nearly three decades since the conductor's death.

Williams, Fiedler's successor, will be back for a series of concerts starting tomorrow night. He will lead the Pops in selections from the many film scores he's composed, including ''Star Wars" and ''Jaws."

But the Pops has seen its attendance fall from a high of 93 percent of Symphony Hall's capacity in 2000 to 88 percent last year. As a result, the Pops this year have cut two Celtic music concerts and reduced the number of patriotic music shows from three to two. Last year, two of those patriotic concerts played to just over 60 percent of Symphony Hall's 2,300-seat capacity.

Cutting those shows opened up spots for the Mann and My Morning Jacket concerts, known as ''Pops on the Edge." Together with Jazz Fest, the programming changes account for nine of the 39 concerts in the Pops season.

''Basically, we want to segment the audience more," said marketing director Kim Noltemy. ''We want to drive younger people to one type of concert, and have the traditional crowd go to the traditional concerts."

Last year, the Pops tested the rock-show strategy on its audience by playing two concerts with rock band Guster. Both sold out, and led to the unlikeliest of sights in the hallowed hall: Audience members, in jeans and tank tops, dancing in the aisles.

They made an impression.

''We looked down and could see people who never come to hear us," said Lockhart. ''It was a relief. Our hunch was correct."

That's no surprise, according to Arthur Cohen of the New York-based arts consultants LaPlaca Cohen. The key for an organization with the rich history of the Pops is to balance the new with the most successful, crowd-pleasing traditions.

''They don't want to alienate the existing audience but they have to be thinking ahead," said Cohen, whose firm has been helping museums and music presenters target what he calls ''YoCos," the ''young cosmopolitans" that have become an important player in the arts market. ''What the Pops is worried about is the next generation of cultural patrons."

One of Cohen's clients, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has introduced programming designed to reach that younger audience. Earlier this year, the Philharmonic booked an all-night, electronic music party with the British group the Orb in Walt Disney Hall. Last year, at its summer venue, the Hollywood Bowl, the Philharmonic presented ''Video Games Live," music performed with lasers, lights, and live characters from ''Final Fantasy" and ''Halo." (A stop in Boston last November had to be canceled when, due to poor ticket sales, organizers scaled back a tour.) This season, the orchestra will play with Scottish chamber pop band Belle & Sebastian.

''What's the risk?" said Arvind Manocha, general manager of the Hollywood Bowl. ''The risk is that people don't like it, that it's not a good, artistic product. But we don't just say, 'Let's put a band in front of an orchestra.' We're trying to find groups and artists that we think would really take advantage of having an entire orchestra at their disposal."

The upside is clear. Arlington's Hannah Schwab, 26, has never been to Symphony Hall. She didn't hesitate to buy tickets for a My Morning Jacket concert after seeing the June 21 and 22 shows announced on jambase.com.

''I'm excited," she said. ''My Morning Jacket has a lot of songs that incorporate violins and I thought it would be awesome to see with a symphony."

Lockhart has been looking forward to the show. The new strategy has seen him relying more on Margo Saulnier, the 32-year-old Pops artistic coordinator who scours Boston's rock clubs looking for potential talent.

It has also meant Lockhart is downloading more songs onto his iPod. He's become a fan of singer-songwriter Amos Lee and hopes to schedule Pops shows with the band Death Cab For Cutie.

Costello was a natural, he says -- an artist who came of age during the late 1970s but whose musical breadth includes country, big band, and even classical. He's in the midst of a short symphony tour. During the first part of tonight's concert, the Pops will play music from ''Il Sogno," Costello's first full-length orchestral work.

Paul Deninger, an investment banker and one of the co-chairs of tonight's event, said that many of his peers now live and work in the suburbs and rarely come into Boston on weeknights, unless they're going to a Red Sox game. That's the climate the Pops needs to compete in, and that's what makes Costello so perfect.

Deninger said he had no problem recruiting business leaders to purchase tables, which cost as much as $10,000 apiece.

''It was a snap," said Deninger. ''I think most of the guys I called, if I said, 'You've got to support it,' they'd support it. But they're actually excited about going and saying 'Thank you' for calling them. It's not an obligation or an act of philanthropy."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com