Manos Percussion’s “Wood, Water, and Wolfgang,” presented by Arizona Philharmonic (AZ Phil), an impressive collection of percussion instruments and music from all over the world, is performing at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 5, at Yavapai College Performing Arts Center (YCPAC).

Manos Percussion is sure to be a unique experience, including pairings with local singers and soprano soloist Emily Spencer.

“People don’t often think about Mozart being played on percussion and they really don’t think about Mozart being played on percussion and backing up a choir and soprano soloist,” said Maria Flurry, AZ Phil’s principal timpanist. “A lot of people think of percussion as drums or maybe they even know that drums have shells of wood. Or maybe they know about xylophones in the orchestra or woodblocks, or you hear temple blocks on Christmas songs. Maybe they even know about a marimba. So, that’s a lot of familiar stuff of percussion.”

Flurry explained that the most unusual percussion instrument in this performance is water.

“Water is something that I was not trained on, but I got a chance to start working on about 15 years ago,” Flurry said. “A lot of people tell me that after seeing one of our concerts, washing dishes becomes a new experience.”

Manos Percussion features a stage full of percussion instruments, including timpani (kettle drums), water, snare drums, bass drum, clapping, chimes, marimba, drum set, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, hand bells, rain stick, voice, gong, snapping, tam-tam, duck call, cymbals, bows, triangle, visual art, metal, glass and bamboo wind chimes and stomping.

The last piece of the performance, called “The Sky Fell,” uses water as a percussion instrument to replicate the sound of rain.

“Chicken Little was running around saying, ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling,’ and then at the end of the story finds out the sky wasn’t actually falling,” Flurry said. “This piece explores ‘what if the sky did actually fall?’ And one of the ways that we think about sky falling is rain. So, this piece has a very large thunderstorm in it and we will be playing on water as part of that.”

Another unique part of the performance is the inclusion of local visual artist Carlos Duran, who will paint an abstract piece on stage throughout the show.

“He is going to paint live to this music,” Flurry said. “People think of music as happening in time and then you go to an art gallery and the pictures are like frozen in time. So he’s combining the two by making his visual art over a period of time. It will be abstract, which is totally cool because it’ll be his reaction to the sounds that he’s hearing. It just really gives the audience even more dimensions to be able to engage with the art that’s happening on stage.”

Ticket information, sponsorship and volunteer opportunities can be found at www.AZPhil.org or on Facebook.

Jesse Bertel is a reporter/videographer for the Prescott News Network. Follow him on Twitter @ JesseBertel, email him at jbertel@prescottaz.com, or call 928-445-3333, ext. 2043.