Stone’s Throw Quartet

Dan Hartung is the Assistant Professor of Music, Percussion Coordinator, and Assistant Director of Bands at Elon University. He was recently the Percussion Director of the Tarpon Springs Leadership Conservatory for the Arts and is also the founder and artistic director of the Austin Percussion Collective (APC). 

Dan has a longstanding commitment to commissioning new music. He has commissioned over 20 new works by prominent composers including Ian Whillock, Darian Thomas, Sophie Mathieu, Ivan Trevino, and Louis Raymond-Kolker. He has performed as a soloist and chamber musician with APC, Density512, Flat Water Trio, and LNK Percussion Collective. He has also served as principal percussionist for The Orchestra San Antonio, Opera San Antonio, Ballet San Antonio, and the Classical Music Institute Orchestra for the Andrea Bocelli World Tour. 

Since 2014, Dan has been an active marching percussion educator working with some of the foremost high school and collegiate programs across the country. In 2017, he marched snare drum with the Troopers Drum and Bugle Corps and has taught such schools as James Bowie High School, Vista Ridge High School, Gretna High School, Michigan State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and many more. 

Dan is passionate about studying Afro-Diasporic percussion. He has studied Afro-Cuban percussion genres in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba with renowned musicians Octavio Rodríguez Rivera, Miguel Bernal, Michel Aldalma, Miguelito León, and members of the Latin Grammy Award winning Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Additionally, he has performed with the Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba group Tambores del Pueblo, the Austin West African Drum and Dance Company, and he participates in Afro-Venezuelan Tambor celebrations with San Juan USA in New York, NY and Miami, FL.

Dan has earned degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (D.M.A.), Michigan State University (M.M.) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (B.M.E.). He has been fortunate to study with some of the foremost collegiate educators including Dave Hall, Gwen Dease, Jon Weber, Kevin “Bujo” Jones, Ivan Trevino, Richard Huntley, and Tom Burritt. Dan is an endorsing education artist for Vic Firth sticks and mallets and Zildjian cymbals and a member of the Black Swamp Percussion Educator Network.

MK Phillips is a dynamic North Carolina-based percussionist and educator, currently serving as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Percussion at Wake Forest University, Adjunct Professor of Percussion at Winston-Salem State University, and Lecturer of Percussion at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). An active performer and clinician, MK has appeared as a guest artist, adjudicator, and clinician at universities, high schools, and conferences nationwide. They have also performed extensively at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC).

MK earned a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where they were recently recognized with the 2024–2025 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award from the College of Visual and Performing Arts. They hold a Master of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, as well as dual Bachelor’s degrees in Music Education and Music Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 

An advocate for new music, MK has recently commissioned and/or premiered works by composers including Annika Socolofsky, Nick Werth, Russell Wharton, Von Hansen, Ivan Trevino, Michael Burritt, Robert Honstein, Katherine Bodor, Rob Rankin, and Isaac Pyatt. As a chamber musician, they have performed at Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) with InBloom Percussion (2019), the Indiana University Percussion Ensemble (2018), the PAS All-Star Ensemble (2015), and the UNCG Percussion Ensemble (2015). 

As an orchestral musician, MK has also performed with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra, Western Piedmont Symphony, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Piedmont Wind Symphony, North Carolina Brass Band, Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, Salisbury Symphony Orchestra, Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra, Davidson SCORE, Piedmont Opera, and the Greensboro Opera. 

McKayla Phillips proudly endorses Black Swamp Percussion, Vic Firth, Balter Mallets, and Zildjian. 

Louis Raymond-Kolker is a composer and percussionist from Austin, Texas. He is a member of Inside Out Steelband, Larkspur Percussion Duo, and the Austin Percussion Collective. He teaches percussion, composition, and music theory at High Point University.

Louis actively works to facilitate the creation and performance of new music, and foster connections between composers, performers, and audiences. His compositions blend a sense of sentimentality, vivid imagery, and treating silly things seriously (and vice versa). As a performer, Louis specializes on steelpan, the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago, and regularly premieres new works for instruments in the steelpan family.

Louis is a member of the Dream Educators Collective and the Black Swamp Percussion Educator Network. His compositions are published through C. Alan Publications, Boxfish Music Publishing, and his website, louisraymondkolker.com.

Alex Richard is a percussion teacher and freelance artist based in Winston-Salem, NC. She currently serves as a Percussion Instructor for the Elon Marching Band, and serves as an Adjunct Instructor teaching drumset, American music history, and musical communication at High Point University. Alex has a vested interest in new and popular music, and how those intersect to inform contemporary performance. As an advocate for new music, Alex regularly commissions and joins consortium efforts for new and exciting percussion works. In the Fall of 2025, she performed Thierry De Mey’s Silence Must Be! as a part of the PASIC New Music Focus Day, and in Fall of 2024, she performed alongside several PAS North Carolina members, presenting accessible modern percussion ensemble works at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference. 

Alex received her M.M. in Percussion Performance from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, studying with Dr. Dave Hall, and her B.M. in Music Education from The University of Tennessee-Knoxville, studying with Dr. Andrew Bliss and Keith Brown. She currently serves as the Secretary for the North Carolina Chapter of the Percussive Arts Society, and spends her free time baking and hanging out with her small gray cat, Bubbles.