About Dan

Dan Hartung is the Assistant Professor of Music 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. In 2017, he marched snare drum with the Troopers Drum and Bugle Corps, and has performed as a soloist and chamber musician with APC, Density512, 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. 

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.