Expect some audience participation when the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra plays its “Home for the Holidays” concert on Monday at Stambaugh Auditorium.

“We don’t have a chorus yet with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra,” said Music Director and Conductor Erik Ochsner. “We’re figuring out ways how we could involve that. But I said, ‘Well, let’s just have the whole audience sing. So we’re inviting everybody to stand up and sing the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus (from George Frideric Handel’s ‘Messiah’). We’re even going to be passing out music notes for people who read music, and we’ll get 2,000 people to sing ‘Hallelujah.’ Why not?”

After the audiences’ pipes get warmed up with Handel, the concert will conclude with an orchestral sing-a-long.

“We’re going to put words up on the back wall,” Ochsner said. “People can sing. They can tap their feet. They can clap along. If you don’t know the tunes, then you’ve been living under a rock. So we have ‘Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,’ ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,’ ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ and ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.'”

There will be plenty of time for the audience to sit back and listen as well.

In September Ochsner was named conductor and music director of the nearly 100-year-old orchestra, but Monday’s concert certainly isn’t his debut.

Ochsner guest conducted the orchestra nine times since the death of previous music director Randall Craig Fleischer in 2020. And in terms of an official “debut,” Ochsner said he and the YSO board will be treating next month’s Masterworks concert, not Monday’s pops concert, as his music director premiere.

But Ochsner has no intention of shortchanging the orchestral elements in the holiday pops offering.

“The approach that I took for programming this is trying to appeal to our classical audience, so the first half of the concert is leaning more towards traditional classical music that has a holiday theme, whereas the second half is a little bit more popsy, more relaxed,” he said.

The first half will open with Leroy Anderson’s “Christmas Festival,” an orchestral arrangement of holiday favorites that’s frequently played by the Boston Pops, and it also will include Emile Waldteufel’s “Les Patineurs (The Skater’s Waltz),” and three works from the Strauss family — Johann Strauss II’s Wiener Blut (Vienna Life) Waltz Op. 354 and Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning) Polka, Op. 324 and Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March, Op. 228.

There will be two compositions called “Sleigh Ride,” one by British composer Frederick Delius and one by Anderson, an American composer.

“I enjoy listening to how different composers create something based on the same idea,” Ochsner said. “I’ve always joked that if you ask a classroom of student painters, ‘Paint me what a beautiful day looks like,’ you’re going to get 20 different opinions of that. Think about how many symphonies we have, how many requiems we have. So I think it’s fun just to listen to (different) classical music portraying what a sleigh ride would sound or even feel like.”

“A Winter Miracle” by contemporary composer Tim Berens is part of the first half, and that’s something Ochsner plans to continue in his programming.

“We need to be aware of who our living composers are,” he said

Joining the orchestra for the second half of the concert will be soprano Amanda Beagle, a Howland native and former Miss Ohio who has performed with orchestras, opera companies and on cruise ships.

“I sent Erik a list of about 15 songs, and then he chose his favorites,” Beagle said. “And it’s a really diverse program. We have ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ and ‘There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays,’ which really bring home the nostalgia of Christmas. And then a nice, light touch with ‘Santa Baby,’ and then more classical, traditional pieces, like ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘I Wish You Christmas, which is a John Rutter piece, so there’ll be lighter moments and more serious moments. I think something for everyone.”

Beagle will be performing with a broken foot, which actually has more impact on one’s singing than might be expected.

“If I were to stand on one leg and try to sing, my pelvis would be lopsided, so that would affect my support,” she said. “I’m actually going to sit in a high chair, like a high back stool, and that will allow me to have the freedom to sing without worrying about being off balance.”

If you go …

WHAT: “Home for the Holidays” — Youngstown Symphony Orchestra with Erik Ochsner, conductor, and Amanda Beagle, soprano

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Monday

WHERE: Stambaugh Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Ave., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets range from $20 to $65 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-259-9651.