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The Minnesota Orchestra is teaming up with a Led Zeppelin cover band at the Target Center. Orchestra officials say it's a chance to try new repertoire and expand their audience. (Image courtesy of The Music of Led Zeppelin)

Tomorrow night the Target Center will rumble with the music of Led Zeppelin. Not the actual Led Zeppelin, but a sound-alike band that bangs out Zeppelin songs note for note. What's somewhat unusual is who will provide the accompaniment-- members of the Minnesota Orchestra.

Minneapolis, Minn. — The prospect of orchestral flourishes and heavy metal riffs occupying the same musical space may upset some classical purists who support the Minnesota Orchestra. But Minnesota Orchestra violinist Michael Sutton, 36, is really looking forward to the show.

"I haven't heard this cover band that we're playing with, but you can't go wrong with Led Zeppelin," he says. "It's going to be something to remember. I can't wait. It's going to be a hoot."

The Minnesota Orchestra has actually been hired by a group called "The Music of Led Zeppelin" to be its backup band Saturday night. The group includes four studio musicians and features Randy Jackson, lead singer for the '80s heavy-metal band Zebra, in the role of singer Robert Plant.

It tours the country, hooking up with local orchestras at every stop in an effort to take Led Zeppelin tunes to new symphonic heights.

Composer Brent Havens arranged the music. He says his goal is to use orchestras to put what he calls the intricacies of Led Zeppelin's music on full display.

As a kid, Havens had only a mild interest in Zeppelin. After he signed on to the project he says he became truly impressed with the harmonic sophistication and rhythmic complexity of the songs.

"It's pretty mind-blowing when you think about it," Havens says. "They were so far ahead of everybody else. They really had some interesting, intriguing stuff going on in rock music that just wasn't happening elsewhere."

Havens says he isn't trying to reinterpret Zeppelin's music, but lend it a different color and space. Sometimes the orchestra is there merely to play along with the band. Other times it responds in its own voice.

"Like if the guitar player's out doing his solo, I'll have a counterpoint line in the first violins," he says. "Or I will have the woodwinds playing some enhanced lines underneath that, and maybe some accents from the brass. But it's all within the bounds of the actual music."

Minnesota Orchestra President and Led Zeppelin lover Tony Woodcock says the offer to play the music of a pioneering rock band at the Target Center was irresistible.

He says the songs are arranged specifically to allow the orchestra to be a star performer. Woodcock anticipates a huge crowd, many of whom will be seeing the orchestra for the first time.

"And it is my sincere hope that those people are going to think 'Wow, what an orchestra,' and think to experiment and to come and hear us at Orchestra Hall, because there should be that direct correlation in their experience of music," Woodcock says.

"Performing good music is our mission," Woodcock says. "I think that this is serious music. It's creative. I think it was writen in an extremely good way. So it's part of our mission. The fact that we are at this very moment recording Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and that we have the versatility of the great musicians in this orchestra to move our attention from Beethoven to Led Zeppelin, is all part of the flexibility and diversity that makes a musician's life."

Not all the musicians are happy about the orchestra's involvement. Violinist Michael Sutton says while no one has told him Led Zeppelin's music is beneath them, some have said the orchestra should stick to its own venue, Orchestra Hall. They're also dreading how loud it's going to be.

"They kind of think that anything that you have to wear earplugs for is not going to be a whole lot of fun," he says.

In the coming weeks, the Minnesota Orchestra will return to Orchestra Hall and the likes of Strauss and Sibelius. Whether the "Led Heads" will follow them, Sutton isn't sure.

"They might not know who Sebelius is, but they're going to know who the Minnesota Orchestra is after Saturday night," he says.

After Saturay night's Zeppelin fest, the orchestra's next foray into the realm of '70s pop music will be in March, when music director Osmo Vanska conducts an all ABBA show.