Fandango!: Double the plucking, as guitar and harpsichord wed

What's surprising and impressive about walking into Keith Womer's house for the first time is you find yourself surrounded by harpsichords. Womer, who serves as both artistic director of the baroque music ensemble La Follia and organist at First Presbyterian Church, doesn't necessarily consider himself a professional musician – he does have a day job, in the oil business. Still, anyone who has three harpsichords in two rooms directly by his front door is residing in a subdivision of the professional neighborhood. This weekend, you can hear Womer indulge his passion for one of the most recognizably classical of instruments with internationally renowned guitarist Susan McDonald as they present Fandango!, the final concert of First Presbyterian's 2006-2007 St. Cecilia Music Series.

It may seem a strange marriage, this union between the guitar, which many consider a modern instrument, and the harpsichord. Certainly, it's one in which there's little margin for error where making music is concerned. "When you have a melody instrument playing with an instrument like an organ," says Womer, "they're easier to put together because one is sustained. The challenge with two plucked instruments, like the guitar and the harpsichord, is that there's a plucked point, so being together as a duo is a lot more difficult."

But your sense of that difficulty fades upon hearing Womer and McDonald play the centerpiece of their concert, a Luigi Boccherini fandango. The sound of Womer's harpsichord melds seamlessly with the distinctively Spanish force of McDonald's guitar, so much so that you can see dark-haired men in tight, well-cut suits and boots whirling and twirling women in long, layered skirts and shawls around the dance floor in your mind.

So how is it that an Italian ended up writing such renowned Spanish dance music? "Well, I know Boccherini had a Spanish mistress," says McDonald. "Wait, you're not recording this, are you? That was off the record." What's on the record is that Boccherini, best known as a cellist, was for much of his life a court composer in Spain, making it somewhat natural for him to meld the Italian musical tradition and Spanish guitar tradition. "You're feeling this real collision of cultures," says McDonald, "because you're combining this very orderly, classical music with the influence of the Moors and Gypsies of Spain, and everybody's coming together and getting used to what everyone has to bring to the table." As Womer succinctly puts it, "The concert celebrates the fireworks that happen when two plucked instruments perform together, and that fire is captured in the spirit of Fandango!"

Fandango! will be presented Friday, May 18, 8pm, at First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa. For more information, visit www.fpcaustin.org.