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Though it remains based in the city, the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra has adopted a new name for its 2012-13 season in hopes of expanding its reach and its mission.

Now marketing itself as the "Orchestra of the Alleghenies," the symphony opens its season at 7:30 p.m. Friday with a holiday concert at Bethel Park High School featuring Joe Negri. Negri will join the orchestra again for a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee at McKeesport Area High School.

Tickets are $10 for students, $18 for adults and $15 for seniors.

Negri is "a Pittsburgh icon," says Julie McGough, orchestra manager and librarian, who has worked with Negri before both in McKeesport and with the Beaver Valley Philharmonic. "He brings the audience into the music. They love seeing him perform and he's a master of the jazz guitar."

Although the legal name remains "McKeesport Symphony Society," the orchestra's new name is a reflection of the fact that funding for the arts is shrinking every year, says Bruce Lauffer, now in his 10th season as the orchestra's music director. Corporate donors in particular have been reluctant to sponsor the orchestra if it's confined only to McKeesport, he says.

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"We're always going to be in McKeesport, and McKeesport is still going to be our home," Lauffer says. "If we do three or four concerts a year, one of them will always be there." He compares the orchestra's new focus to that of the River City Brass Band, which is based in Pittsburgh but performs at venues throughout western Pennsylvania.

In this day and age, Lauffer says, few communities of any size can support a professional symphony orchestra. Musicians in the Orchestra of the Alleghenies are members of the American Federation of Musicians local union 60-471.

"The money that has been supporting the arts is drying up," Lauffer says. "if you look throughout the country right now, orchestras are folding like crazy. Some of it's been brought on by a lack of fundraising or planning, and some of it is a lack of education of the public."

The last well-known American to regularly educate people about classical music was composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, Lauffer argues. Bernstein, longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic, was a frequent guest on talk shows and educational TV. Bernstein died in 1990.

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"We've got to go out and re-connect with the communities and the school districts," Lauffer says. Community orchestras can help ensure their own survival by supplementing music education in schools, he says. "We're seeing a lot of school districts have trouble with funding because when the state budget was cut, funding for arts programs were the first things they cut," Lauffer says.

In an attempt to expand outreach, orchestra members are going into schools and working with student musicians. Some of those student musicians in turn will be performing with the Orchestra of the Alleghenies at its school concerts, McGough says.

"We're trying to set up our concerts so that people north, south, east and west (of Pittsburgh) can see them, and also to involve the schools and students in what we're doing," McGough says. "We're trying to bring music to communities and bring people and families together through music. We'd really like to incorporate ourselves into the community and educational outreach is a big part of that."

Schools such as Bethel Park have been "very receptive," she says. At the same time, McGough says, "we're trying to keep our ties to McKeesport, and keep bringing music to people in McKeesport. We're just trying to share it with other people as well."

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Volunteers --- including some of the orchestra's musicians --- will play an expanded role in the future of the orchestra, Lauffer and McGough say, though they will proceed forward without the McKeesport Symphony Auxiliary, which was recently disbanded.

"Some of the women who were involved in the auxiliary had been helping us out for 25, 30, 40 years," Lauffer says. "No one was upset when they told us they were going to dissolve the organization."

At the same time, "there's a lot of work that has to get done," he says. "We are really trying to reach out and get some more volunteers, and especially get some younger people involved."

The board includes Annette Condeluci, president; Amy Movic, vice president; Sara Traeger, Denis Robinson, Rob Yusko, Jeanne Dix, Val McCarthy, Sally Haberman and Patricia Monoyoudis.

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Founded as an amateur group in 1959, the orchestra celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009-10. "We want to go another 50 years," Lauffer says. In recent years, the symphony has worked with artists from the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and the Pittsburgh Opera.

Lauffer says the orchestra is also building partnerships with the Bach and Mendelssohn choirs of Pittsburgh, and is hoping to work with amateur and semi-professional church and school groups as well.

"We want to align ourselves with other groups in the area," he says. "If we can introduce our audiences to them, and their people to us, hopefully we can make a good impression on these other communities and we can start building our audience, too."

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Although classical and symphonic music is ubiquitous in movies and TV, it can be hard to attract younger audiences to orchestra concerts. "It's hard to get them away from their computers and Facebook," McGough says. "Once they listen to it, they love it. They love the emotion and they love being a part of the experience.

"It's just that everybody is so busy, it's hard for them to get the time to attend a concert," she says. "But once people experience symphonic music, they want to experience it again."

The importance of music education on fostering a future appreciation for classical music would seem to be obvious. Some of the most enthusiastic audience members are those who played an instrument in a high school or college band, McGough says.

"I meet so many people who had played music as a kid, who are still passionate about talking about it, even if they no longer play an instrument," she says.

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Editor's Note: People interested in volunteering with the McKeesport Symphony Society should call 412-664-2854 or email mail@mckeesportsymphony.org. Tube City Community Media Inc. will record this Sunday's concert for later broadcast over Pittsburgh's WRCT-FM (88.3).

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