Special guests will join the UNC Symphony Orchestra in its first concert of the 2008-2009 academic year, Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in Memorial Hall on the UNC campus.

The 100-member orchestra, conducted by its music director, Tonu Kalam, will open the performance with Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait," a piece for narrator and orchestra that is based on excerpts from Abraham Lincoln's speeches.

The narrator will be UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp, appearing two days after his installation on University Day this coming Sunday.

"This will be a wonderful opportunity for the University community to see the new chancellor in a different role," said Kalam, a UNC music professor. "This is a very popular and uplifting work."

The next guest will be soprano and UNC music professor Terry Rhodes, singing with the orchestra in the second piece of the concert, Peter Lieberson's "Neruda Songs" (2005). The composer wrote the lyrical and touching set of love songs for his wife, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Kalam said.

The last piece will be Ravel's Suite No. 2 from "Daphnis et Chloe." The concert is part of the 2008-'09 Music on the Hill series from UNC's Carolina Performing Arts and the music department in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Assembled each August by auditions, the orchestra consists of music majors, other UNC undergraduates, graduate students, researchers and community musicians.

Tickets are $15, or $10 for UNC faculty, students and staff. They are on sale at the Memorial Hall box office on Cameron Avenue, 843-3333, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.

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