By no means is he standing still. His push to broaden the orchestra's audience led to this year's new series, "Pops on the Edge," and a pair of sold-out concerts featuring the rock band Guster. The Pops have just put out their second self-released CD. And Lockhart's range — his ability to conduct everything from traditional classical music to Broadway songs and pop tunes — continues to impress his bosses.

"I don't know of anyone else who has the ability to do so many styles and do them at such a high professional level," says BSO managing director Mark Volpe.

Still, Pops attendance is slightly down. And at a time when Fiedler was four decades from putting down his stick, Keith Lockhart is restless.

"When I came to town, I had easily marketable things," Lockhart says. "Youth, a fresh face, somebody who people thought would be an attractive leader. But why do you think great shows on television have limited runs? Because eventually they're not new.

"To be successful, over the long haul, you need to reinvent, if not yourself, then the product you're associated with. Keith Lockhart, by himself, is not going to be new and interesting forever."

They have dressed him up in so many ways. Keith in a kilt, in leather pants, in a sophisticated turtleneck. RCA had him jump, tux and all, into a swimming pool for an album cover. The Pops contemplated asking him to take acting lessons. The orchestra's management, feeling the 34-year-old "Evening at Pops" TV show had gone flat, tried to revive the program last year with a series of up-close-and-personal segments. Then Fidelity Investments yanked its funding. No new shows are being produced.

"What do you have to be, to be conductor of the Pops?" asks longtime producer Bill Cosel, in Lockhart's defense. "Are you supposed to be a best supporting-actor nominee? Arthur Fiedler would say, 'Drop dead.' "

Of course, Fiedler, the pioneering Pops conductor, took over the orchestra in 1930, a time when he faced virtually no competition on the entertainment landscape.

This was before the megaplex, Clear Channel and even television. Over half a century, Fiedler's orchestra sold more than 50 million albums, and he became a white-mustached icon of 20th-century American music.

Though still in college during Fiedler's final days, Lockhart has seen his career defined by his link to the Pops legend. Concert programs still note that Lockhart was 35 when he was hired, "the same age as Arthur Fiedler at the time of his appointment."

"He's up against a tough situation," says Fiedler's son Peter, the interim general manager at WBUR-FM. "My father, whatever the magic he had, it was one of those things of time and place. He was more than a conductor, he was part of Boston. Keith hasn't really made love to Boston in that respect."